2023 David McCullough Prize Winners | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

2023 Winners

Read the prize-winning essays, selected from more than one hundred and fifty students’ entries. These entries were reviewed by a panel of our master teachers, and the finalists were reviewed by a jury of historians.

Place	Name	Essay Title	School	State
1st	Charles Scheuermann	“The Timber Wars: How an Owl Saved the Forests and Divided a Nation”	Regis High School	NY
2nd	Sania Edlich	“Making the Most of ‘the Grandest Opportunity’: The Impact of the 1893 Columbian Exposition on the Black Women’s Club Movement”	Trinity School	NY
3rd	Sophie Baker	“Typewriters for Victory: Patriotic Sacrifice and the Feminization of the Workforce during World War II”	Rowland Hall	UT
3rd	Evan Epstein	“How the Daisy Ad Transformed American Politics”	Trinity School	NY
3rd	Katherine Hsu	“From Art to Cultural Diplomacy: Martha Graham Uses Dance as a Communication Vehicle”	The Chapin School	NY
3rd	Isaac Neumann	“The Cherokee Phoenix Newspaper: Traversing Frontiers in Journalism and Shattering Stereotypes with Every Word Printed”	University School of Milwaukee	WI
3rd	Charlotte Peterson	“Physics, Patriotism, and Propaganda: American Education’s Continuity and Changes after Sputnik”	Stuyvesant High School	NY
3rd	Victor Robila	“Trust and Publicity: The Decrease in Soviet-US Tensions during Perestroika and Glasnost”	Hunter College High School	NY
3rd	Alyssa Tang	“The 1964 Surgeon General’s Report: Communicating the Hazards of Smoking to the Public”	University High School, Irvine	CA
3rd	Neo Yee	“Quarantining Chinatown: How Isolationist Policy-Making Facilitated the Development of a Chinese-American Community in San Francisco”	Hunter College High School	NY
3rd	Jasmine Zheng	“Sinclair’s Socialism: Passion or Overenthusiasm”	Charlotte Latin School	NC