his section lists the most important books in American history of recent years, as determined by the leading awards in the field: the Pulitzer, Bancroft, Lincoln, and Douglass Prizes, and the Frederick Jackson Turner Award. It also includes a selected list of journals.







For almost a century the Pulitzer Prize has recognized a distinguished book on the history of the United States each year. The prize currently entails a $10,000 cash award.


2008
Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (Oxford University Press)

2007
Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff, The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation (Alfred A. Knopf)

2006
David M. Oshinsky, Polio: An American Story (Oxford University Press)

2005
David Hackett Fischer, Washington's Crossing (Oxford University Press)

2004
Steven Hahn, A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press)

2003
Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943 (Henry Holt and Company)

2002
Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

2001
Joseph J. Ellis, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation (Alfred A. Knopf)

2000
David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (Oxford University Press)

1999
Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (Oxford University Press)

1998
Edward J. Larson, Summer of the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion (Basic Books)




Columbia University awards Bancroft Prizes annually to authors of distinguished works in either American history (including biography) or diplomacy, or both. Founded in 1948, Bancroft Prizes now include honoraria of $10,000.

2008
Allan M. Brandt, The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product that Defined America (Basic Books)
Charles Postel, The Populist Vision (Oxford University Press)
Peter Silver, Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America (W. W. Norton & Company)

2007
Robert D. Richardson, William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism (Houghton Mifflin)
Jack Temple Kirby, Mockingbird Song: Ecological Landscapes of the South (University of North Carolina Press)

2006
Erskine Clarke, Dwelling Place: A Plantation Epic (Yale University Press)
Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge University Press)
Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (W.W. Norton & Company)

2005
Melvin Patrick Ely, Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s Through the Civil War (Alfred A. Knopf)
Michael J. Klarman, From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality (Oxford University Press)
Michael O'Brien, Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810-1860 (two volumes, The University of North Carolina Press)

2004
Edward L. Ayers, In the Presence of Mine Enemies: War in the Heart of America, 1859-1863 (W. W. Norton & Co.)
Steven Hahn, A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press)
George M. Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (Yale University Press)

2003
James F. Brooks, Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands (University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture)
Alan Gallay, The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670-1717 (Yale University Press)

2002
David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press)
Alice Kessler-Harris, In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th-Century America (Oxford University Press)

2001
Susan Lee Johnson, Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush (W. W. Norton)
David Nasaw, The Chief: The Life of William Randolf Hearst (Houghton Mifflin)

2000
James H. Merrell, Into the American Woods: Negotiators of the American Frontier (W. W. Norton)
John Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (W. W. Norton and The New Press)
Linda Gordon, The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction (Harvard University Press)

1999
Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Harvard University Press)
Philip D. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry (University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture)
Jill Lepore, The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity (Alfred A. Knopf)

1998
Christine Leigh Heyrman, Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt (Alfred A. Knopf)
Walter LaFeber, The Clash: A History of U.S. - Japan Relations (W. W. Norton)
Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Identity in Post War Detroit (Princeton University Press)

1997
David E. Kyvig, Explicit and Authentic Acts: Amending the U.S. Constitution, 1776-1995 (University of Kansas Press)
James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United Stages, 1945-1974 (Oxford University Press)




Co-sponsored by the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute, the Lincoln Prize has offered since 1991 an annual award of $50,000 to authors of the best book(s) on Lincoln or the Civil War era.

2008
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 (Penguin)

2007
Douglas L. Wilson, Lincoln's Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words (Alfred A. Knopf)

2006
Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (Simon & Schuster)

2005
Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America (Simon & Schuster)

2004
Richard J. Carwardine, Lincoln (Pearson Education Ltd.)

2003
George C. Rable, Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg! (University of North Carolina Press)

2002
David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Harvard University Press)

2001
Russell F. Weigley, A Great Civil War: A Military and Political History, 1861-1865 (Indiana University Press)

2000
John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger, Runaway Slaves: Rebels in the Plantation (Oxford University Press)
Allen C. Guelzo, Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President (William B. Eerdmans)

1999
Douglas L. Wilson, Honor's Voice: The Transformation of Abraham Lincoln (Alfred A. Knopf)

1998
James McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (Oxford University Press)




Under the aegis of the Gilder Lehrman Institute and the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale Univeristy, the Frederick Douglass Prize has awarded since 1999 $25,000 to the author of the year's most outstanding book on slavery, resistance, and/or abolition.

2007
Christopher Leslie Brown
Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture by the University of North Carolina Press)

2006
Rebecca J. Scott
Degrees of Freedom: Louisiana and Cuba after Slavery (Harvard University Press)

2005
Laurent Dubois
A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation
in the French Caribbean, 1787-1804 (University of North Carolina Press)

2004
Jean Fagan Yellin, Harriet Jacobs: A Life (Basic Books)

2003
Seymour Drescher, The Mighty Experiment: Free Labor versus Slavery in British Emancipation (Oxford University Press)

2002
Robert W. Harms, The Diligent: A Voyage Through the Worlds of the Slave Trade (Basic Books)

2001
David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Harvard University Press)

2000
David Eltis, The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas (Cambridge University Press)

1999
Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Harvard University Press)
Philip D. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth Centrury Chesapeake and Lowcountry (University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture)



The Frederick Jackson Turner Award, first given in 1959 as the Prize Studies Award of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, has been given each year by the Organization of American Historians for an author's first book on some significant phase of American history and also to the press that submits and publishes it.

2008
Charles Postel, California State University, Sacramento, The Populist Vision (Oxford University Press)

2007
Ned Blackhawk, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Violence Over the Land: Indian and Empires in the Early American West (Harvard University Press)

2006
Tiya Alicia Miles, University of Michigan, Ties that Bind: The Ties that Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom (University of California Press)

2004
Thomas A. Guglielmo, White on Arrival: Italians, Race, Color, and Power in Chicago, 1890-1945 (Oxford University Press)

2003
James F. Brooks, Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands (University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture)

2002
Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

2001
Fred Anderson, The Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the fate of the Empire in British North America, 1754-1766 (Alfred A. Knopf)

2000
David M. Kennedy, Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (Oxford University Press)

1999
Elliott West, The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers & the Gold Rush to Colorado (University Press of Kansas)

1998
John M. Barry, Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Food of 1927 and How It Chaged America (Simon & Schuster)

1997
Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War (University of North Carolina Press)

American History Journals

Common-place: The Interactive Journal of Early American Life
http://www.common-place.org/
An online journal devoted to early American history from the first European contact through the nineteenth century, "Common-place" is published quarterly and co-sponsored by the American Antiquarian Society and the Gilder Lehrman Institute. Editorial advisors and contributors include such eminent historians as David W. Blight, Jon Butler, John Demos, Linda K. Kerber, Philip Morgan, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, and Gordon S. Wood. Access to "Common-place" is free and reader feedback is encouraged.

The Concord Review
http://www.tcr.org
"The Concord Review" is the only formal journal to focus exclusively on history writing by high school students. Founded in 1987 and edited by Will Fitzhugh, the CR has published more than 500 research papers (average 5,000 words, with endnotes and bibliography) in various fields of history by authors from forty-one states in the U.S. and thirty-three other countries. Selected content is available online, along with information on subscriptions and submissions.

The History Cooperative
http://www.historycooperative.org
The History Cooperative offers online history scholarship by providing full text versions of journal articles, as well as collateral content, including multimedia elements that could not be reproduced in the print versions of some articles.

History Now
http://www.historynow.org
This quarterly online journal, sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Institute, features articles by noted historians as well as lesson plans, links to related websites, bibliographies, and many other resources. In each issue, the editors bring together historians, master teachers and archivists to comment on a single historical theme.

The Journal of American History
http://www.indiana.edu/~jah/
For over eight decades, the JAH has been the most prominent scholarly journal in American history. Published by the Organization of American Historians, it features reviews of books, films, exhibitions, and websites as well as articles and historiographic essays. Since January 2000, the JAH has been available online at The History Cooperative. Access to the online version is limited, however, to institutions that subscribe to the print version and members of the OAH.

Slavery & Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies
http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/link.asp?id=108546
"Slavery & Abolition" is the only journal focused exclusively on the demographic, socio-economic, historical and psychological aspects of human bondage from the ancient period to the present, as well as the dismantling of slave systems and their legacies. The journal offers articles, comments, reflections and review articles and an annual bibliographical supplement that provides the only comprehensive listing of books and articles in the field. Please see "Slavery & Abolition's" web page for information on print subscriptions.

The William & Mary Quarterly
http://www.wm.edu/oieahc/wmq/
A publication of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, "The William & Mary Quarterly" (founded in 1892) is one of the oldest scholarly journals in the U.S. It is the leading journal for the study of early American history and culture, from European contact with the New World to the early nineteenth century, and welcomes works from all disciplines that touch on the early American period, including literature, law, political science, anthropology, archaeology, and material culture. Online access requires a subscription through JSTOR or The History Cooperative.

Additional Journals

Film & History
www.filmandhistory.org
Film & History is concerned with the impact of motion pictures on our society. Also, unlike many other journals, Film & History focuses on how feature films and documentary films both represent and interpret history.

A Guide to Historical Journals
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/resources.cfm#journals