I’ve heard from some of my more famous acquaintances about what it’s like to serve on a prize jury, but Michael Cunningham takes us deep inside the decision making of last year’s Pulitzer committee, which gave the award to (drumroll please) nobody.

Because I haven’t read all three finalists yet, I don’t yet have a dog in this fight; so I’ll throw it open to comments. The Pale King, Train Dreams, Swamplandia, which book should have taken the prize? Should it have been another book? Or was the Pulitzer committee right in giving it all a miss?