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The Pulitzer Prize for History, administered by Columbia University, is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It has been presented since 1917 for a distinguished book about the history of the United States. Thus it is one of the original Pulitzers, for the program was inaugurated in 1917 with seven prizes, four of which were awarded that year.[1] The Pulitzer Prize program has also recognized some historical work with its Biography prize, from 1917, and its General Nonfiction prize, from 1962.
Finalists have been announced since 1980, ordinarily two others beside the winner.[2]
In its first 97 years to 2013, the History Pulitzer was awarded 95 times. Two prizes were given in 1989; none in 1919, 1984, and 1994.[2]
Entries from this point on include the finalists listed after the winner for each year.
Year | Author | Title | Result | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|
1990 | Stanley Karnow | In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines | Winner | |
Hugh Honour | The Image of the Black in Western Art, Volume IV: From the American Revolution to World War I | Finalist | ||
Thomas P. Hughes | American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm 1870–1970 | Finalist | ||
1991 | Laurel Thatcher Ulrich | A Midwife's Tale | Winner | |
Lizabeth Cohen | Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939 | Finalist | ||
Hugh Davis Graham | The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy | Finalist | ||
Kenneth M. Stampp | America in 1857: A Nation on the Brink | Finalist | ||
1992 | Mark E. Neely, Jr. | The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties | Winner | |
William Cronon | Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West | Finalist | ||
Theodore Draper | A Very Thin Line: The Iran-Contra Affairs | Finalist | ||
John Frederick Martin | Profits in the Wilderness: Entrepreneurship and the Founding of New England Towns in the Seventeenth Century | Finalist | ||
Richard White | The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 | Finalist | ||
1993 | Gordon S. Wood | The Radicalism of the American Revolution | Winner | |
Edward L. Ayers | The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction | Finalist | ||
Garry Wills | Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America | Finalist | ||
1994 | No award given | |||
Lawrence M. Friedman | Crime and Punishment in American History | Finalist | ||
Gerald Posner | Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK | Finalist | ||
Joel Williamson | William Faulkner and Southern History | Finalist | ||
1995 | Doris Kearns Goodwin | No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II | Winner | |
James Goodman | Stories of Scottsboro | Finalist | ||
Merrill D. Peterson | Lincoln in American Memory | Finalist | ||
1996 | Alan Taylor | William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic | Winner | |
Lance Banning | The Sacred Fire of Liberty: James Madison and the Founding of the Federal Republic | Finalist | ||
Richard Rhodes | Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb | Finalist | ||
1997 | Jack N. Rakove | Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution | Winner | |
Stephen Nissenbaum | The Battle for Christmas: A Cultural History of America's Most Cherished Holiday | Finalist | ||
Mary Beth Norton | Founding Mothers and Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society | Finalist | ||
1998 | Edward J. Larson | Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion | Winner | [13] |
J. Anthony Lukas | Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America | Finalist | ||
Rogers Smith | Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History | Finalist | ||
1999 | Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace | Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 | Winner | [14] |
William E. Burrows | This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age | Finalist | ||
Paula Mitchell Marks | In a Barren Land: American Indian Dispossession and Survival | Finalist |
Year | Author | Title | Result | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|
2010 | Liaquat Ahamed | Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World | Winner | [18] |
Greg Grandin | Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City | Finalist | ||
Gordon S. Wood | Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 | Finalist | ||
2011 | Eric Foner | The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery | Winner | [19] |
Stephanie McCurry | Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South | Finalist | [20] | |
Michael J. Rawson | Eden on the Charles: The Making of Boston | Finalist | [21] | |
2012 | Manning Marable | Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention | Winner | [22][23] |
Anne F. Hyde | Empires, Nations & Families: A History of the North American West, 1800-1860 | Finalist | ||
Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan | The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama Bin Laden | Finalist | ||
Richard White | Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America | Finalist | ||
2013 | Fredrik Logevall | Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam | Winner | [24] |
Bernard Bailyn | The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America: The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600-1675 | Finalist | ||
John Fabian Witt | Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History | Finalist | ||
2014 | Alan Taylor | The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832 | Winner | [25][26] |
Jacqueline Jones | A Dreadful Deceit: The Myth of Race from the Colonial Era to Obama's America | Finalist | ||
Eric Schlosser | Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety | Finalist | ||
2015 | Elizabeth A. Fenn | Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People | Winner | [27] |
Sven Beckert | Empire of Cotton: A Global History | Finalist | ||
Nick Bunker | An Empire on the Edge: How Britain Came to Fight America | Finalist | ||
2016 | T. J. Stiles | Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America | Winner | [28] |
Annie Jacobsen | The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency | Finalist | ||
Brian Matthew Jordan | Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War | Finalist | ||
James M. Scott | Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor | Finalist | ||
2017 | Heather Ann Thompson | Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy | Winner | [29][30] |
Larrie D. Ferreiro | Brothers at Arms: American Independence and the Men of France and Spain Who Saved It | Finalist | ||
Wendy Warren | New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America | Finalist | ||
2018 | Jack E. Davis | The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea | Winner | [31][32] |
Kim Phillips-Fein | Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics | Finalist | [31] | |
Steven J. Ross | Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots against Hollywood and America | Finalist | [31] | |
2019 | David W. Blight | Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom | Winner | [33][34] |
W. Fitzhugh Brundage | Civilizing Torture: An American Tradition | Finalist | [33] | |
Victoria Johnson | American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic | Finalist | [33] |
Year | Author | Title | Result | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|
2020 | W. Caleb McDaniel | Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America | Winner | [35][36][37] |
Greg Grandin | The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America | Finalist | [35] | |
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor | Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership | Finalist | [35] | |
2021 | Marcia Chatelain | Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America | Winner | [38][39][40] |
Eric Cervini | The Deviant’s War: The Homosexual vs. the United States of America | Finalist | [39] | |
Megan Kate Nelson | The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West | Finalist | [39] | |
2022 | Nicole Eustace | Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America | Winner | [41][42][43] |
Ada Ferrer | Cuba: An American History | Winner | [41][42][43] | |
Kate Masur | Until Justice Be Done: America's First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction | Finalist | [41] | |
2023 | Jefferson Cowie | Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power | Winner | [44][45] |
Garrett M. Graff | Watergate: A New History | Finalist | [44] | |
Michael John Witgen | Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America | Finalist | [44] | |
2024 | Jacqueline Jones | No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston’s Black Workers in the Civil War Era | Winner | [46][47] |
Elliott West | Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion | Finalist | [46] | |
Michael Willrich | American Anarchy: The Epic Struggle Between Immigrant Radicals and the US Government at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century | Finalist | [46] |
Five people have won the Pulitzer Prize for History twice.