New York ? Books on slavery, the environment and American foreign policy have received awards from the J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project for nonfiction writing.

The awards, co-administered by Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University, were announced Wednesday.

Samantha Powers’ “A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide” was cited for its “passion and precision about America’s response to genocide in the 20th century.” Powers already had won a National Book Critics Circle award.

Other winners announced Wednesday were Robert Harms’ “The Diligent: A Voyage Through the Worlds of the Slave Trade,” and, in a special category for works-in-progress, Suzannah Lessard’s “Mapping the World: An Inquiry Into the Meaning of Sprawl.”

Lessard will receive $45,000, while Powers and Harms will get $10,000 each.

The awards were established in 1998 in honor of Lukas, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Common Ground.” Lukas killed himself in 1997.