Bancroft Prize (1948-2013)

information from Columbia University and wikipedia accessed 6/26/13

from Columbia University: NEW YORK, March 18, 2013 –
Columbia University announced today that two acclaimed works will be awarded the 2013 Bancroft Prize: a gripping and eloquent history of the human impact on the ocean, and a persuasively argued history of the idea that conflict among nations can be regulated by law.

The winners are W. Jeffrey Bolster for The Mortal Sea: Fishing the Atlantic in the Age of Sail (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012) and John Fabian Witt for Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History (Free Press, 2012).

The winning works, while different in subject matter, demonstrate the powerful impact of re-examination of historical events in an ever-changing, ever-evolving world.

The Bancroft Prize is awarded annually by the trustees of Columbia University. Winners are judged in terms of the scope, significance, depth of research, and richness of interpretation they present in the areas of American history and diplomacy. There were 223 books nominated that were considered for the 2013 prize.

from wiki: The Bancroft Prize is awarded each year by the trustees of Columbia University for books about diplomacy or the history of the Americas. It was established in 1948 by a bequest from Frederic Bancroft. The prize has been generally considered to be among the most prestigious awards in the field of American history writing and comes with a $10,000 stipend (raised from $4,000 beginning in 2004). Seventeen winners had their work supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, and 16 winners were also recipients of the Pulitzer Prize for History.

The prize was affected by the post-award controversy involving the scholarship of Michael A. Bellesiles, who received the prize for his work in 2001. Following independent investigations, Columbia University rescinded the prize for the first time.

2013 winners:
Bolster, W. Jeffrey. The Mortal Sea: Fishing the Atlantic in the Age of Sail. Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2012.
Witt, John Fabian. Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History. Free Press, 2012.

2012 winners:
Hyde, Anne. Empires, Nations and Families: A History of the North American West, 1800-1860.. University of Nebraska, 2011.
Rodgers, Daniel. Age of Fracture.. Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2011.
Brown-Nagin, Tomiko Courage to Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Rights Movement.. Oxford University Press, 2011.

2011 winners:
Eric Foner. The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (Norton)
Christopher Tomlin. Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580-1865
Sara Dubow. Ourselves Unborn: A History of the Fetus in Modern America

2010
Gordon, Linda. Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits. New York : W.W. Norton & Company, 2009.
Holton, Woody. Abigail Adams. New York : Free Press, 2009.
Jacobs, Margaret D. White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, and the Removal of Indigenous Children in the American West and Australia, 1880-1940. Lincoln, NE : University of Nebraska Press, 2009.

2009 winners:
Thomas G. Andrews for Killing for Coal: America's Deadliest Labor War 
Drew Gilpin Faust for This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War
Pekka Hämäläinen for The Comanche Empire

Previous winners list from Wikipedia accessed 3/14/10
1948 Nevins, Allan. Ordeal of the Union
DeVoto, Bernard. Across the Wide Missouri
1949 Sherwood, Robert E. Roosevelt and Hopkins.
Morison, Samuel E. The Rising Sun in the Pacific
1950 Gipson, Lawrence H. The Victorious Year, 1758–1760,Vol. VII of The Great War for Empire.
Bolton, Herbert E. Coronado.
1951 Holcombe, Arthur N. Our More Perfect Union
Smith, Henry N. Virgin Land
1952 Pusey, Merlo J. Charles Evans Hughes
Woodward, C. Vann. Origins of the New South, 1877–1913
1953 Dangerfield, George. The Era of Good Feelings
Goldman, Eric F. Rendezvous with Destiny
1954 Rossiter, Clinton. Seedtime of the Republic
Langer, William L. and S. Everett Gleason. The Undeclared War
1955 Horgan, Paul. Great River, The Rio Grande
White, Leonard D. The Jacksonians
1956 Stevenson, Elizabeth. Henry Adams
Randall, J. G. and Richard N. Current. Last Full Measure: Lincoln the President
1957 Kennan, George F. Russia Leaves the War
Link, Arthur S. Wilson: The New Freedom
1958 Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. The Crisis of the Old Order
Mott, Frank Luther. A History of American Magazines. Vol. 4.
1959 Samuels, Ernest. Henry Adams, The Middle Years
Boorstin, Daniel J. The Americans: The Colonial Experience
1960 Palmer, R. R. The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760–1800
Leech, Margaret. In the Days of McKinley
1961 Peterson, Merrill D. The Jefferson Image in the American Mind
Link, Arthur S. Wilson: The Struggle for Neutrality, 1914–1915
1962 Cremin, Lawrence A. The Transformation of the School
Gilbert, Felix To the Farewell Address: Ideas of Early American Foreign Policy
Duberman, Martin B. Charles Francis Adams, 1807–1866
1963 Smith, Page. John Adams
Wohlstetter, Roberta. Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision
Stoessinger, John G. The Might of Nations: World Politics in Our Time
1964 Leuchtenburg, William E. Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932–1940
Thomas, John L. The Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison
Seabury, Paul. Power, Freedom, and Diplomacy: The Foreign Policy of the United States of America.
1965 Perkins, Bradford. Castlereagh and Adams: England and the United States, 1812–1823
Willcox, William B. Portrait of a General: Sir Henry Clinton in the War of Independence
Borg, Dorothy. The United States and the Far Eastern Crisis of 1933–1938
1966 Morris, Richard B. The Peacemakers: The Great Powers and American Independence
Friend, Theodore W., III. Between Two Empires: The Ordeal of the Philippines, 1929–1946
1967 Freehling, William W. Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, 1816–1836
Sellers, Charles. James K. Polk, Continentalist, 1843–1846. Vol. II
Young, James Sterling. The Washington Community, 1800–1828
1968 Bullock, Henry Allen. A History of Negro Education in the South from 1619 to the Present.
Bushman, Richard L. From Puritan to Yankee: Character and Social Order in Connecticut, 1690–1765.
Bailyn, Bernard. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
1969 Jordan, Winthrop D. White over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550–1812.
Levin, N. Gordon, Jr. Woodrow Wilson and World Politics: America's Response to War and Revolution
Tugwell, Rexford Guy. The Brains Trust
1970 Sellers, Charles. Charles Willson Peale
Wood, Gordon S. The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787
Carter, Dan T. Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South
1971 Barnouw, Erik. The Image Empire: A History of Broadcasting in the United States from 1953. Vol. III
Kennedy, David M. Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger
Wall, Joseph Frazier. Andrew Carnegie
1972 Degler, Carl N. Neither Black Nor White
Middlekauff, Robert. The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596–1728
Morison, Samuel E.. The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages
1973 FitzGerald, Frances. Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam
Gaddis, John Lewis. The United States and the Origins of the Cold War
Harlan, Louis R.. Booker T. Washington
1974 Billington, Ray Allen. Frederick Jackson Turner: Historian, Scholar, Teacher.
Hoopes, Townsend. The Devil and John Foster Dulles
Thernstrom, Stephan. The Other Bostonians: Poverty and Progress in the American Metropolis, 1880–1970
1975 Fogel, Robert William and Stanley L. Engerman. Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery and Time on the Cross: Evidence and Methods
George, Alexander L. and Richard Smoke. Deterrence in American Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice.
Genovese, Eugene. Roll, Jordan, Roll.
1976 Davis, David Brion. The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770–1823
Lewis, R. W. B. Edith Wharton: A Biography
1977 Dawley, Alan. Class and Community: The Industrial Revolution in Lynn
Gross, Robert A. The Minutemen and Their World
Higman, Barry W. Slave Population and Economy in Jamaica, 1807–1834
1978 Chandler, Alfred D., Jr. The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business.
Horwitz, Morton J. The Transformation of American Law, 1780–1860
1979 Thorne, Christopher. Allies of a Kind: The United States, Britain, and the War Against Japan, 1941–1945
Wallace, Anthony F. C. Rockdale: The Growth of An American Village in the Early Industrial Revolution
1980 Dallek, Robert. Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945
Dublin, Thomas. Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826–1860
Worster, Donald. Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s
1981 Steel, Ronald. Walter Lipmann and the American Century. New York : Little, Brown, 1980.
Strouse, Jean. Alice James: A Biography
1982 Countryman, Edward. A People in Revolution: The American Revolution and Political Society in New York, 1760–1790
Ryan, Mary P. Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790–1865.
1983 Demos, John Putnam. Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England.
Salvatore, Nick. Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist
1984 Harlan, Louis R. Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901–1915
Starr, Paul. The Social Transformation of American Medicine: The Rise of a Sovereign Profession and the Making of a Vast Industry
1985 Lebsock, Suzanne. The Free Women of Petersburg: Status and Culture in a Southern Town, 1784–1860
Silverman, Kenneth. The Life and Times of Cotton Mather
1986 Jackson, Kenneth T. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States
Jones, Jacqueline. Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present
1987 Doerflinger, Thomas. A Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise: Merchants and Economic Development in Revolutionary Philadelphia.
Lane, Roger. Roots of Violence in Black Philadelphia, 1860–1900
1988 Sherry, Michael S. The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon
Kolchin, Peter. Unfree Labor: American Slavery and Russian Serfdom
1989 Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877
Morgan, Edmund S. Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America.
1990 Merrell, James H. The Indians' New World: Catawbas and Their Neighbors from European Contact through the Era of Removal
McMillen, Neil R. Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow
1991 Cohen, Lizabeth. Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939
Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785–1812
1992 Cronon, William. Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West
Royster, Charles. The Destructive War: William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans
1993 Capper, Charles. The Private Years, Vol. 1 of Margaret Fuller: An American Romantic Life.
Leffler, Melvyn P. A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War
1994 Elkins, Stanley and Eric McKitrick. The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788–1800.
Jordan, Winthrop D. Tumult and Silence at Second Creek: An Inquiry into a Civil War Slave Conspiracy
Lewis, David Levering. W. E. B. DuBois: The Biography of a Race, 1868–1919
1995 Brooke, John L. The Refiner's Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644–1844
Dittmer, John. Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi
1996 Taylor, Alan. William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic..
Reynolds, David S. Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography
1997 Kyvig, David E. Explicit and Authentic Acts: Amending the U.S. Constitution, 1776–1795.
Patterson, James T. Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974
1998 Heyrman, Christine Leigh. Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt
LaFeber, Walter. The Clash: A History of U.S.-Japan Relations.
Sugrue, Thomas J. The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit
1999 Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America.
Morgan, Philip D. A Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Low Country
Lepore, Jill. The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity
2000 Merrell, James H. Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the American Frontier.
Dower, John Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II
Gordon, Linda. The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction
2001 Bellesiles, Michael. Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture
(Award rescinded in 2002 because of scholarly misconduct by the author.)
Johnson, Susan Lee. Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush
Nasaw, David. The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst
2002 Blight, David W. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory
Kessler-Harris, Alice. In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th-Century America
2003 Brooks, James F. Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands
Gallay, Alan. The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670–1717
2004 Ayers, Edward L. In the Presence of Mine Enemies: War in the Heart of America, 1859–1863.
Hahn, Steven. A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration. Cambridge, MA : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003.
Marsden, George M. Jonathan Edwards: A Life.
2005 Ely, Melvin Patrick. Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s Through the Civil War
Klarman, Michael J. From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality
O'Brien, Michael. Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810–1860
2006 Clarke, Erskine. Dwelling Place: A Plantation Epic. New Haven : Yale University Press, 2005.
Westad, Odd Arne. The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times. Cambridge and New York : Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Wilentz, Sean. The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln
2007 Kirby, Jack Temple. Mockingbird Song: Ecological Landscapes of the South
Richardson, Robert D.. William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism
2008 Brandt, Allan M. The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product that Defined America.
Postel, Charles. The Populist Vision
Silver, Peter. Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America.

American History Book Prize (2010-11)

from New York Historical Society accessed 3/1/10
Awarded for an adult non-fiction book on American history or biography copyrighted in 2009 that is distinguished by its scholarship, its literary style and its appeal to a general as well as an academic audience. Last year’s winner of the New-York Historical Society American History Book Prize was Drew Gilpin Faust for This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War. Previous winners include Daniel Walker Howe (What God Hath Wrought), David Nasaw (Andrew Carnegie), and Doris Kearns Goodwin (Team of Rivals).

2011 Prize
Ron Chernow has won the American History Book Prize, sponsored by the New-York Historical Society, for Washington: A Life

2010 Prize

Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 (Oxford University Press) by Gordon S. Wood has won the American History Book Prize, sponsored by the New-York Historical Society, according to the New York Times. The prize comes with a $50,000 award, an engraved medal and the title of the American Historian Laureate. Wood is a professor emeritus at Brown University.

Colby Award (2009-11)

2011 info from Tawani Foundation acessed 2/12/11

2011 Colby Award Winner  Karl Marlantes.  Matterhorn

If Not Now, When?: Duty and Sacrifice in America's Time of Need by Jack Jacobs won the 2010 $5,000 Colby Award. Named after the late ambassador and former CIA Director William E. Colby, the prize recognizes a first work of fiction or nonfiction that has made a significant contribution to the public's understanding of intelligence operations, military history or international affairs.

Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10 by Marcus Luttrell and The Forever War by Dexter Filkins have won 2009 $5,000 Colby Awards.

Langum Prize for American Historical Fiction and Legal History (2001-10)

from Langum Charitable Trust website accessed 2/22/10

David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Historical Fiction
A prize to encourage and reward excellent American historical fiction is a natural element in our effort to make the rich history of America accessible to the educated general reader. The David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Historical Fiction is offered annually to the best book in American historical fiction that is both excellent fiction and excellent history. Any press may publish the work, with the exceptions that the book may not be self-published or published by a subsidized publisher.

David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Legal History or Biography
This prize is made annually to be the best university press book in American legal history or biography that is accessible to the educated general public, rooted in sound scholarship, and with themes that touch upon matters of general concern to the American public, past or present.

2010 Winners
Ann Weisgarber for The Personal History of Rachel DuPree
Robin Oliveira for My Name is Mary Sutter -- Honorable Mention
Kelli Carmean for Creekside: An Archeological Novel -- Special Mention
Jackson Taylor for The Blue Orchard -- Special Mention

2009 Winners:
Edward Rutherfurd for his New York: The Novel
Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman for In the Lion’s Den: A Novel of the Civil War -- Special Mention
Jamie Ford for Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet -- Special Mention

2008 Winners:
Kathleen Kent for The Heretic’s Daughter: A Novel -- Winner
Elisabeth Payne Rosen for Hallam’s War -- Honorable Mention
Jack Fuller’s Abbeville -- Special Mention

2007 Winner:

Kurt Andersen for his Heyday, a novel

2006 Winner:

Sheldon Russell for his Dreams to Dust: A Tale of the Oklahoma Land Rush

2005 Winner:

Madison House: A Novel by Peter Donahue

2004 Winner:

Linda Busby Parker for her Seven Laurels: A Novel -- Winner

Sanora Babb, for Whose Names Are Unknown: A Novel -- Honorable Mention

2003:

Robert J. Begiebing for his Rebecca Wentworth’s Distraction: A Novel 

2002 -- No award given

2001 -- No award given

Langum Prize for Legal History

2008 Winners:
Ernest Freeberg for Democracy’s Prisoner: Eugene V. Debs, the Great War, and the Right to Dissent -- Winner
Peter Charles Hoffer for the book, The Treason Trials of Aaron Burr -- Honorable Mention

2007 Winner:
Bruce J. Dierenfield for The Battle over School Prayer: How Engel v. Vitale Changed America

2006 Winners:
Saul Cornell for A Well-Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America --Winner
Carolyn N. Long for her Mapp v. Ohio: Guarding against Unreasonable Searches and Seizures -- Honorable Mention

2005 Winner:
To the Flag: The Unlikely History of the Pledge of Allegiance by Richard J. Ellis -- Winner
Griswold v. Connecticut: Birth Control and the Constitutional Right of Privacy, by John W. Johnson -- Honorable Mention

2004 Winner:
John M. Ferren for Salt of the Earth, Conscience of the Court: The Story of Justice Wiley Rutledge -- Winner
Fries's Rebellion: The Enduring Struggle for the American Revolution by Paul Douglas Newman -- Honorable Mention

2003:
Robert J. Cottrol, Raymond T. Diamond, and Leland B. Ware for their Brown v. Board of Education: Caste, Culture, and the Constitution 

2002 (two winners):
Stuart Banner for his The Death Penalty: An American History
Lawrence M. Friedman for his American Law in the 20th Century

2001
Elizabeth Urban Alexander for her Notorious Woman: The Celebrated Case of Myra Clark Gaines

CSM list of 5 books about obscure presidents

From Chirstian Science Monitor accessed 8/25/10

1. "The Dark Horse: The Surprise Election and Political Murder of President James A. Garfield," by Kenneth D. Ackerman (2003).

2. "Fraud of the Century: Rutherford B. Hayes, Samuel Tilden, and the Stolen Election of 1876," by Roy Morris Jr. (2004)

3. "The Harding Affair: Love and Espionage during the Great War," by James David Robenalt (2009)

4. "Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln's Legacy" by David O. Stewart (2009)

5. "James Buchanan: The American Presidents Series," by Jean H. Baker (2004)

The Pulitzers (2009-10)

The 2010 Pulitzer Prize book winners:

Fiction: Tinkers by Paul Harding (Bellevue Literary Press), "a powerful celebration of life in which a New England father and son, through suffering and joy, transcend their imprisoning lives and offer new ways of perceiving the world and mortality."

Drama: Next to Normal by Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt (Theatre Communications Group), "a powerful rock musical that grapples with mental illness in a suburban family and expands the scope of subject matter for musicals."

History: Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed (Penguin Press), "a compelling account of how four powerful bankers played crucial roles in triggering the Great Depression and ultimately transforming the United States into the world's financial leader."

Biography or Autobiography: The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T.J. Stiles (Knopf), "a penetrating portrait of a complex, self-made titan who revolutionized transportation, amassed vast wealth and shaped the economic world in ways still felt today."

Poetry: Versed by Rae Armantrout (Wesleyan University Press), "a penetrating portrait of a complex, self-made titan who revolutionized transportation, amassed vast wealth and shaped the economic world in ways still felt today."

General Nonfiction: The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy by David E. Hoffman (Doubleday), "a well documented narrative that examines the terrifying doomsday competition between two superpowers and how weapons of mass destruction still imperil humankind."

Book-related winners and finalists for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize were announced yesterday. The winners are:

Fiction: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (Random House)
Drama: Ruined by Lynn Nottage (Theatre Communications Group; not yet published)
History: The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed (Norton)
Biography: American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham (Random House)
Poetry: The Shadow of Sirius by W. S. Merwin (Copper Canyon Press)
General Nonfiction: Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon (Doubleday),

Finalists in each category included The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich and All Souls by Christine Schutt (fiction); Becky Shaw by Gina Gionfriddo and In the Heights by Lin-Manuel Miranda & Quiara Alegría Hudes (drama); This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust and The Liberal Hour: Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960s by G. Calvin Mackenzie and Robert Weisbrot (history); Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt by H.W. Brands and The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century by Steve Coll (biography); Watching the Spring Festival by Frank Bidart and What Love Comes to: New and Selected Poems by Ruth Stone (poetry); Gandhi and Churchill: The Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age by Arthur Herman and The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe, 1945 by William I. Hitchcock (general nonfiction).

Lincoln Prize (1991-2009)

from Gettysburg College website accessed 2/24/10

Michael Burlingame will receive the $50,000 Lincoln Prize (2010) for his book, "Abraham Lincoln: A Life" (Johns Hopkins University Press), as well as a bronze replica of Augustus Saint-Gaudens life-size bust, "Lincoln the Man." Burlingame is the Chancellor Naomi B. Lynn Distinguished Chair of Lincoln Studies at the University of Illinois at Springfield. The prize, sponsored by Gettysburg College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, will be awarded April 27 at the Union League in New York.
The prize was co-founded in 1990 by businessmen and philanthropists Richard Gilder and Lewis Lehrman, Co-Chairmen of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York and co-creators of the Gilder Lehrman Collection - one of the largest private archives of documents and artifacts in the nation. The Institute is devoted to history education, supporting magnet schools, teacher training, digital archives, curriculum development, exhibitions and publications, as well as the national History Teacher of the Year program.

2009
First Place: James McPherson, Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief and Craig Symonds, Lincoln and His Admirals: Abraham Lincoln, the U.S. Navy, and the Civil War
Honorable Mention: Jacqueline Jones, Saving Savannah: The City and the Civil War. Fred Kaplan, Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer and William Lee Miller, President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman.

2008
First Place: James Oakes, The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics (W. W. Norton)
Elizabeth Brown Pryor, Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters (Viking)
Honorable Mention: Chandra Manning, What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War (Alfred A. Knopf)

2007
First Place: Douglas L. Wilson, Lincoln's Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words (Vintage)
Finalists: Martha Hodes, The Sea Captain's Wife: A True Story of Love, Race, and War in the Nineteenth Century (W. W. Norton); Harry S. Stout, Upon the Alter of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War (Viking Adult).

2006
First Place: Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (Simon & Schuster)
Finalists: Carol Bundy, The Nature of Sacrifice: A Biography of Charles Russell Lowell, Jr., 1835-1864 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux); Margaret Creighton, The Colors of Courage: Gettysburg's Forgotten History - Immigrants, Women, and African Americans in the Civil War's Defining Battle (Basic Books); and Richard F. Miller, Harvard's Civil War: A History of the Twentieth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry (University Press of New England).

2005
First Place: Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation (Simon & Schuster)
Second Place: Harold Holzer, Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech That Made Abraham Lincoln President (Simon & Schuster)
Finalists: Jonathan D. Martin, Divided Mastery: Slave Hiring in the American South (Harvard University Press); Jane A. Schultz, Women at the Front: Hospital Workers in Civil War America (University of North Carolina Press).

2004
First Place: Richard J. Carwardine, Lincoln (Pearson Education Ltd.)
Special Achievement Award: John Y. Simon for editing 26 volumes--to date--of The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant (Southern Illinois University Press)
Finalist: Steven Hahn, A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration (Belknap Press/Harvard University Press)

2003
First Place: George C. Rable, Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg! (University of North Carolina Press)
Second Place: John Stauffer, The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race (Harvard University Press)
Honorable Mention: Michael Fitzgerald, Urban Emancipation: Popular Politics in Reconstruction Mobile, 1860-1890 (Louisiana State University Press)
E-Lincoln Prize: John Adler for HarpWeek Presents Lincoln and the Civil War.com (website)

2002
First Place: David Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, (Harvard University Press).
Honorable Mention: Alice Fahs, The Imagined Civil War: Popular Literature of the North & South, 1861-1865 (University of North Carolina Press)
Honorable Mention: Kenneth J. Winkle, The Young Eagle: The Rise of Abraham Lincoln (Taylor Trade Publishing, Dallas).

2001
First Place: Russell F. Weigley, A Great Civil War: A Military and Political History, 1861-1865 (Indiana University Press).
Second Place: Leonard L. Richards, The Slave Power: The Free North and Southern Domination, 1780-1860 (Louisiana State University Press).
Finalist: Mark L. Bradley, This Astounding Close Road to Bennett Place, (University of North Carolina Press)
E-Lincoln Prize Winner: Edward L. Ayers, Anne S. Rubin, and William G. Thomas for Valley of the Shadow: The Eve of War (CD-ROM)
Second Place: Stephen Railton for Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture (web site).

2000
First Place: John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger, Runaway Slaves: Rebels in the Plantation (Oxford University Press) and Allen C. Guelzo, Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.).
Second Place: Michael Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (Oxford University Press).
Lifetime Achievement Award: Richard N. Current, University Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

1999
First Place: Douglas L. Wilson, Honor's Voice: The Transformation of Abraham Lincoln (Alfred A. Knopf).
Second Place: J. Tracy Power, Lee's Miserables: Life in the Army of Northern Virginia, from the Wilderness to Appomattox (Univ. of North Carolina Press).

1998
First Place: Jim McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (Oxford University Press)
Second Place: William C. Harris, With Charity For All: Lincoln and the Restoration of the Union (University Press of Kentucky)
Honorable Mention: Gary Gallagher, The Confederate War: How Popular Will, Nationalism, and Military Strategy Could Not Stave off Defeat (Harvard University Press).
Honorable Mention: James Robertson, Jr., Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend (MacMillan Publishing Co).

1997
First Place: Don FehrenbacherDred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics (Stanford University Press).

1996
First Place: David Donald, Lincoln (Touchstone Books).
Second Place: Mark Grimsley, The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy Toward Southern Civilians 1861-1865 (Cambridge University Press).
Finalist: Michael Fellman, Citizen Sherman: A Life of William Tecumseh Sherman (Random House).

1995
First Place: Phillip Shaw Paludan, The Presidency of Abraham Lincoln (University Press of Kansas).
Second Place: William Marvel, Andersonville: The Last Depot (University of North Carolina Press).
Finalist: Charles B. Dew, Bond of Iron: Master and Slave at Buffalo Forge (W.W. Norton & Company).

1994
First Place: (co-winners) Ira Berlin, Barbara Fields, Steven Miller, Joseph Reidy, Leslie Rowland, eds., Free at Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War (New Press).
Second Place: Reid Mitchell, The Vacant Chair: The Northern Soldier Leaves Home (Oxford University Press).
Finalist: Winthrop D. Jordan, Tumult and Silence at Second Creek: An Inquiry into a Civil War Slave Conspiracy (Louisiana State University Press).
Finalist: John Evangelist Walsh, The Shadows Rise: Abraham Lincoln and the Anne Rutledge Legend (University of Illinois Press).

1993
First Place: Kenneth Stampp, Lifetime Achievement with special recognition of The Peculiar Institution (Vintage Books).
Second Place: Albert Castel, Decision in the West: The Atlanta Campaign of 1864 (University Press of Kansas).
Finalist: John F. Marszalek, Sherman: A Soldier's Passion for Order (Vintage Books).
Finalist: Craig L. Symonds Joseph E. Johnston, A Civil War Biography (W.W. Norton & Company).

1992
First Place (split equally): William S. McFeely, Frederick Douglass (W.W. Norton & Company) and Charles Royster, The Destructive War: William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans (Vintage Books).
Finalist: Ira Berlin, et al., Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation 1861-1867: Series I, Volume III, The Wartime Genesis of Free Labor: The Lower South (New Press)

1991
First Place: Ken Burns, The Civil War (Howell Press)
Finalist: Mark E. Neely, Jr., The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties (Oxford University Press).
Finalist: Warren Wilkinson, Mother May You Never See The Sights I Have Seen: The Fifty-Seventh Massachusetts Veteran Volunteers in the Last Year of the Civil War (HarperCollins).

Washington Irving Medal for Literary Excellence (1993,2000,2005,2010)

from Saint Nicholas Society’s web site, accessed 2/1/10, which does NOT have a list of all the winners.

The Saint Nicholas Society celebrates New York and the people that make it dynamic and exciting. It achieves this in several ways:

1) Honoring artists and scholars who have distinguished themselves through their work with the Washington Irving Medal for Literary Excellence, an award established in 1985. Recipients include: Louis Auchincloss, Simon Schama, David McCullough, Christopher Buckley, Russell Shorto and Charles Gehring (jointly), and Ron Chernow.

As their most literary of founders, then, Irving’s name appears on their Medal for Literary Excellence — but  writing about Irving is not a requirement for the award! David McCullough won it for Truman in 1993, Ron Chernow received it for Alexander Hamilton in 2005, while Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace got it in 2000 for Gotham.

2010 Award -- One of the more distinguished New York City literary prizes was awarded to Brian Jay Jones, author of Washington Irving: An American Original. The Associated Press called the book "authoritative" and the Washington Post's Michael Dirda praised it as "engaging, clearly written, and well researched."

US Military History

US Military History from ForeignPolicy.com By Tom Ricks

These are my picks-books that I loved. Your choices may be very different. Keeping yourself to just ten, what would they be?

The American Revolution
Washington's Crossing (Pivotal Moments in American History)
By David Hackett Fischer
Hands down, Fischer is my favorite historian. I have read every book he has written, and one of them, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America, his masterpiece, twice. After this, check out his Paul Revere's Ride. I'd love to see him take on the Civil War sometime.

Civil War

Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford History of the United States)

By James M. McPherson

A lively, sweeping, comprehensive history of our most important war.

Indian Wars
Son of the Morning Star
By Evan S. Connell
A great take on Custer, and also of the life of the American soldier in the taking of the West.

World War II
I think our best-written war. If you haven't, read these next two together:

Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest
by Stephen Ambrose
With a company of the 101st Airborne from D-Day to the end of World War II. I was reading this book once aboard a Marine CH-53 flying off Bosnia, and the grizzled old sergeant running the helicopter saw the book and gave me two thumbs up. By the way, I think the HBO series based on this book is the best war movie ever made.

Catch-22
by Joseph Heller.
The flip side of the band of brothers: Someone is trying to kill me, even though I have done nothing to him. More of a military book than many remember. "Without realizing how it had come about," Heller writes, "the combat men in the squadron discovered themselves dominated by the administrators appointed to serve them." Thus is it always.

And two from the war in the Pacific:

With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa
by E.B. Sledge.
No one passage or quotation leaps out, just the clear-eyed descriptions of mud, filth, flies and maggots by a young Marine who was amazed to be alive when the war ended ("You will survive," a mysterious voice assured him during a battle) and went on to become a professor of biology.

Thunder Below
by Eugene Fluckey.
A bad title for a sprightly memoir by a young submarine captain in the Pacific war, written by an old man looking back as a retired admiral, perhaps a bit amazed at the feats of his reckless youth. After sneaking into a harbor and shelling Japanese ships, he ran his sub into shoals, figuring correctly that no one would be crazy enough to follow him.

Korea

This Kind of War: The Classic Korean War History
by T.R. Fehrenbach.
The book to read about the Korean War, if only for one passage: "You may fly over a land forever, you may bomb it, atomize it, pulverize it and wipe it clean of life -- but if you desire to defend it, protect it and keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground, the way the Roman legions did, by putting your young men into the mud." This should hang on a wall somewhere in Washington. I am always amazed at the amount of mud that military operations churn up. And how heavy it can be on your boots. In parts of Iraq, the mud is like cement-gray, heavy and very difficult to chip off.

Vietnam

Both these Vietnam books are as much about how war changes people as about the war itself.

Achilles In Vietnam : Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character
by Jonathan Shay.
Written by a full-time veterans' counselor. "Bad leadership is a cause of combat trauma," but good training is a preventive medicine that can reduce trauma. Even so, "prolonged combat can wreck the personality." It makes me think of Oliver Wendell Holmes' report to his mother after the battle of Cold Harbor in 1864 that he was done.

The Nightingale's Song by Robert Timberg

Obscure title, but a wonderful book about how war shaped John McCain, James Webb, Oliver North, and others schooled at the Naval Academy in the 1960s.

New WPA books

On its 75th anniversary, there are at least four new marvelous books on the Works Progress Administration, FDR's New Deal program that put millions of unemployed Americans back on the job during the Great Depression. The titles unintentionally foreshadow the current economic meltdown. (Be warned: you might find yourself wondering if a "new" WPA could be in our future.)

Nick Taylor's exhaustive study, American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA (Bantam), tackles the program's many achievements and challenges with enough insight and enthusiasm to please history buffs and dabblers alike. You'll be shocked to learn how much of the WPA's handiwork still exists coast to coast, from airports and dams to community parks and post office murals.

Kathryn Flynn and Richard Polese's handsomely illustrated The New Deal (Gibbs Smith) delves into the eclectic deeds of the WPA as well as Social Security, the short-lived Civilian Conservation Corps and Civil Works Administration--the latter two of which together preserved wilderness areas and created countless roads, bridges and public buildings.

One of the WPA's most controversial ventures, the Federal Theatre Project, gets a fresh look in Susan Quinn's Furious Improvisation: How the WPA and a Cast of Thousands Made High Art out of Desperate Times (Walker). The FTP, along with the Federal Arts, Music and Writers' Projects (known collectively as "Federal One"), made up 1% of the WPA's enormous budget but, according to Quinn's lively and entertaining account, received the most Congressional scrutiny--and scorn--due to allegations of Communist infiltration (a subject of Tim Robbins's film The Cradle Will Rock).

State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America compiled by Paris Review deputy editor Matt Weiland and McSweeney's editor-at-large Sean Wilsey (Ecco) recreates the spirit of the WPA's famous "American Guide" series. While the Federal Writers' Project assigned thousands of out-of-work scribes to create a written portrait of the U.S., State by State employs some of today's best authors--including Dave Eggers (Illinois), Barry Hannah (Mississippi), Jhumpa Lahiri (Rhode Island) and Rick Moody (Connecticut)--to create a more quirky armchair road trip. (Don't miss the Out of the Book movie based on this from Powell's Books.)

More books on the WPA are on their way. Arriving later this month is Posters for the People: The Art of the WPA by Ennis Carter and Christopher DeNoon (Quirk Books), which documents the colorful achievements and far-reaching influence of the Federal Art Project's Poster Division. Historians consider the WPA's posters among the most noteworthy examples of public art in the U.S. They advertised exhibits and performances by the other arts programs, encouraged travel, warned against disease and helped to promote the nation's economic recovery.

And this February, David A. Taylor's Soul of a People: The WPA Writers' Project Uncovers Depression America (Wiley) will chronicle the work of future literary stars like John Cheever, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, Studs Terkel and Richard Wright as they toiled to create the WPA's popular state and regional guidebooks.--Larry Portzline is a writer and college instructor in Pennsylvania and founded Bookstore Tourism.