The Book Prize Index

The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League

Jeff Hobbs

On arriving at Yale, Jeff Hobbs became fast friends with the man who would be his roommate for four years. Robert Peace's life had been rough, living in poverty with his mother in 1980s Newark, his father in jail. But he was a brilliant student, and it was supposed to get easier. It didn't. In an honest rendering of Robert's relationships in two fiercely insular worlds, Hobbs encompasses the most enduring conflicts in America. (Bestseller)

BiographyBiography · medium confidenceBiography81 signalsLlm Classifier: Biography -> BiographyKeyword Classifier: Arts & Criticism -> Arts & CriticismKeyword Classifier: Biography -> BiographyIntellectual Biography

Award History

1 wins · 3 total

AwardYearResultCategory / Notes
Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current InterestMajor2014WinnerSecondary source
Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in NonfictionMajor2015LonglistOfficial source
Dayton Literary Peace Prize: Nonfiction2015FinalistSecondary source
View all award history (3)
Experimental book profileGenerated by GPT-5.4 nano · may contain inaccuracies

This is an unverified interpretation of the catalog description, offered as an opt-in discovery experiment—not as bibliographic fact.

  1. 01 Central figures

    • Robert Peace92%

  2. 02 Central places

    • Newark80%
    Show lower-confidence suggestions

    These suggestions did not meet the normal display threshold and are more likely to be wrong.

    • Yale62%

  3. 03 Suggested argument

    Robert Peace’s move from poverty in Newark to Yale did not make his life easier; the book portrays enduring conflicts that continued despite his brilliance and promise.

    Model confidence 64%

  4. 04 Reading orientation

    38 / 100 academic

    Serious trade

    An estimate of intended readership and scholarly apparatus—not quality or importance.

Confidence percentages are the model's own estimates. Profile confidence: 78%.