Tinkers by Paul Harding

The following are the winners of the 2010 Pulitzer Prizes for Letters.

FICTION: “Tinkers,” by Paul Harding, is about the memories of a dying man, George Washington Crosby, who remembers being abandoned by his father, an epileptic.

Mr. Harding, 42, teaches creative writing at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and said the seed of the novel came from his grandfather’s spare reminisces of his own father. “I could never get him to elaborate on it,” Mr. Harding said. “So of course it became irresistible to me.”

HISTORY: “Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World,” by Liaquat Ahamed. Long before the banking system buckled in 2008, Mr. Ahamed, a 57-year-old economist born in Kenya, was already examining the 1930s to see what lessons could be gleaned for our own era. His book, begun in 2004 and the first he has written, is, the award citation says, “a compelling account” of how four powerful central bankers “played crucial roles in triggering the Great Depression” with mistaken policies.

BIOGRAPHY: “The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt,” by T.J. Stiles. Vanderbilt is one of those names that Americans instantly recognize, but Mr. Stiles, 45, said he was drawn to the founder of the dynasty because he was “one of the most misunderstood of the major figures in American history.”

Writing about “the Commodore” was a challenge, Mr. Stiles said, because he did not keep a diary or leave behind letters or documents. But scouring 19th-century public records and the papers of Vanderbilt’s various railway corporations helped Mr. Stiles produce what the award citation called “a penetrating portrait of a complex, self-made titan.”

POETRY: “Versed,” by Rae Armantrout. In her ninth volume of poetry, Ms. Armantrout, 62, explored themes of war and illness, driven by the war in Iraq and her own diagnosis of adrenal cortical cancer.

“You could say there are things happening in your body that you can’t control and you don’t want them to be happening,” said Ms. Armantrout, “and there are things in your society that you can’t control and you don’t want them to be happening.”

GENERAL NONFICTION: “The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy,” by David E. Hoffman. Mr. Hoffman, 56, a contributing editor and former Moscow bureau chief for The Washington Post, relied heavily on never-before-seen documents from the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party. “I hope to open people’s eyes that secrecy, mistrust and suspicion are as dangerous as weapons of mass destruction,” Mr. Hoffman said Monday.

The Pulitzer Board called the book “a well-documented narrative that examines the terrifying doomsday competition between two superpowers.”

Jennifer Higdon won the music prize for her Violin Concerto while the poetry award went to Rae Armantrout for “Versed.”