Babylon Girls: Black Women Performers and the Shaping of the Modern, by Jayna Brown. Duke University Press, 2008.

Jayna Brown's Babylon Girls, a groundbreaking study of African-American women performing in cabaret acts, chorus lines and burlesque revues between 1890 and 1945 was hailed by Freedley juror Jason Rubin as a "necessary" scholarly addition to the areas of entertainment history, race and gender and performance studies. "Jayna Brown's investigation... of singing and dancing performances by black women entertainers," Rubin wrote, "... opens our eyes, ears, hearts and minds to the fabulous women... who helped shape the codes of reception in the white and black audiences who in turn negotiated the evolution of the modern woman."

2009 Freedley Award Jury: Robert Melton, University of California, San Diego; Susan Peters, University of Texas; Jason Rubin, Washington College

Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood, by Mark Harris. Penguin Books, 2008.

TLA juror John Calhoun cited Mark Harris' Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood as "valuable as both film and social history." Fellow TLA juror Catherine Ritchie noted that Harris' examination of five 1967 Hollywood films "offers nostalgia for those moviegoers of a certain generation whose world views were shaped by those... films ultimately entering the national consciousness and, for the younger generation, an engrossing and entertaining introduction to a ridiculously abundant era in American and cinema history." Juror Calhoun added that author Harris' work "represents a rare combination of scholarly research and richly entertaining prose."

2009 TLA Award Jury: John Calhoun, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; Madeline Matz, The Library of Congress; Catherine Ritchie, Dallas Public Library