Ukraine, corruption, and racism have been big news themes of the last year, at least if you take the 2023 Pulitzer Prize as a marker of the times. The awards are a nod to the best of the best in American journalism, and this year Ukraine-based reporting and photographs from the Associated Press and The New York Times were recognised for conveying the suffering of the war’s first year. The Wall Street Journal took out the prize for Investigative Reporting (paywall) for uncovering dodgy US federal officials who traded stocks in the companies they oversee. The Pulitzer peeps also award prizes for books, including a biography of George Floyd (in the non-fiction category) and joint fiction winners Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver and Trust by Hernan Diaz. As if our bedside table pile wasn’t big enough already…