Bancroft Prize

The Bancroft Prize ( English Bancroft Prize ) is a literature and science award from Columbia University for books on American history and diplomacy history . The prize has been awarded since 1948 and is considered one of the most important prizes for American historiography.

It is named after the historian Frederic Bancroft (1860–1945).

Award winners

year	Author and work
1948	Allan Nevins . Ordeal of the Union . New York: Charles Scribner and Sons, 1947.
	Bernard DeVoto . Across the Wide Missouri . New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1947.
1949	Robert E. Sherwood . Roosevelt and Hopkins . New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948.
	Samuel Eliot Morison . The Rising Sun in the Pacific . New York: Little, Brown, 1948.
1950	Lawrence Henry Gipson . The Victorious Year, 1758-1760 . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949. Vol. VII of The Great War for Empire.
	Herbert Eugene Bolton . Coronado . Whittlesey House and the University of New Mexico Press, 1949.
1951	Arthur N. Holcombe . Our More Perfect Union . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1950.
	Henry Nash Smith  : Virgin Land . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1950.
1952	Merlo J. Pusey . Charles Evans Hughes . New York: Macmillan, 1951.
	C. Vann Woodward . Origins of the New South, 1877-1913 . Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1951.
1953	George Dangerfield . The Era of Good Feelings . New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1952.
	Eric F. Goldman . Rendezvous with Destiny . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952.
1954	Clinton Rossiter . Seedtime of the Republic . New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1953.
	William L. Langer , S. Everett Gleason . The Undeclared War . New York: Harper & Bros., 1953.
1955	Paul Horgan . Great River, The Rio Grande . Rinehart, 1954.
	Leonard D. White . The Jacksonians . New York: Macmillan, 1954.
1956	Elizabeth Stevenson . Henry Adams . New York: Macmillan, 1955.
	James G. Randall , Richard N. Current . Last Full Measure: Lincoln the President . New York: Dodd, Mead, 1955.
1957	George F. Kennan . Russia Leaves the War . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1956.
	Arthur S. Link . Wilson: The New Freedom . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1956.
1958	Arthur M. Schlesinger . The Crisis of the Old Order . New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1957.
	Frank Luther Mott . A History of American Magazines . Vol. 4. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1957.
1959	Ernest Samuels . Henry Adams, The Middle Years . Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1958.
	Daniel J. Boorstin . The Americans: The Colonial Experience . New York: Random House, 1958.
1960	RR Palmer . The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760-1800 . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959.
	Margaret Leech . In the Days of McKinley . New York: Harper & Bros., 1959.
1961	Merrill D. Peterson . The Jefferson Image in the American Mind . Oxford, Eng .: Oxford University Press, 1960.
	Arthur S. Link . Wilson: The Struggle for Neutrality, 1914-1915 . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960.
1962	Lawrence A. Cremin . The Transformation of the School . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961.
	Felix Gilbert . To the Farewell Address: Ideas of Early American Foreign Policy . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961.
	Martin Duberman . Charles Francis Adams, 1807-1866 . New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1961.
1963	Page Smith . John Adams . New York: Doubleday, 1962.
	Roberta Wohlstetter . Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision . Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1962.
	John G. Stoessinger . The Might of Nations: World Politics in Our Time . New York: Random House, 1962.
1964	William E. Leuchtenburg . Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940 . New York: Harper & Row, 1963.
	John Lewis Thomas . The Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison . New York: Little, Brown, 1963.
	Paul Seabury . Power, Freedom, and Diplomacy: The Foreign Policy of the United States of America . New York: Random House, 1963.
1965	Bradford Perkins . Castlereagh and Adams: England and the United States, 1812-1823 . Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1964.
	William B. Willcox . Portrait of a General: Sir Henry Clinton in the War of Independence . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964.
	Dorothy Borg . The United States and the Far Eastern Crisis of 1933-1938 . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964.
1966	Richard B. Morris . The Peacemakers: The Great Powers and American Independence . New York: Harper & Row, 1965.
	Theodore Friend . Between Two Empires: The Ordeal of the Philippines, 1929-1946 . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1965.
1967	William W. Freehling . Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, 1816-1836 . New York: Harper & Row, 1966.
	Charles Sellers . James K. Polk, Continentalist, 1843-1846 . Vol. II. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966.
	James Sterling Young . The Washington Community, 1800-1828 . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966.
1968	Henry Allen Bullock . A History of Negro Education in the South from 1619 to the Present . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967.
	Richard Bushman . From Puritan to Yankee: Character and Social Order in Connecticut, 1690-1765 . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967.
	Bernard Bailyn . The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution . Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1967.
1969	Winthrop Jordan . White over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812 . Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1968.
	N. Gordon Levin . Woodrow Wilson and World Politics: America's Response to War and Revolution . Oxford, Eng .: Oxford University Press, 1968.
	Rexford Tugwell . The Brains Trust . New York: The Viking Press, 1968.
1970	Charles Sellers . Charles Willson Peale . New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1969
	Gordon S. Wood . The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 . Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1969.
	Dan T. Carter . Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South . Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1969.
1971	Erik Barnouw . The Image Empire: A History of Broadcasting in the United States from 1953 . Vol. III. Oxford, Eng .: Oxford University Press, 1970.
	David M. Kennedy . Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1970.
	Joseph Frazier Wall . Andrew Carnegie . Oxford, Eng .: Oxford University Press, 1970.
1972	Carl Neumann Degler . Neither black nor white . New York: Macmillan, 1971.
	Robert Middlekauff . The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596-1728 . Oxford, Eng .: Oxford University Press, 1971.
	Samuel Eliot Morison . The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages . Oxford, Eng .: Oxford University Press, 1971.
1973	Frances FitzGerald . Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam . Boston: Atlantic, Little, Brown, 1972.
	John Lewis Gaddis . The United States and the Origins of the Cold War . New York: Columbia University Press, 1972.
	Louis R. Harlan . Booker T. Washington . Oxford, Eng .: Oxford University Press, 1972.
1974	Ray Allen Billington . Frederick Jackson Turner: Historian, Scholar, Teacher . Oxford, Eng .: Oxford University Press, 1973.
	Townsend Hoopes . The Devil and John Foster Dulles . Boston: Atlantic, Little, Brown, 1973.
	Stephan Thernstrom . The Other Bostonians: Poverty and Progress in the American Metropolis, 1880-1970 . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973.
1975	Robert Fogel , Stanley Engerman . Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery and Time on the Cross: Evidence and Methods . Boston: Atlantic, Little, Brown, 1974.
	Alexander L. George and Richard Smoke . Deterrence in American Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice . New York: Columbia University Press, 1974.
	Eugene D. Genovese . Roll, Jordan, roll . New York: Pantheon, 1974.
1976	David Brion Davis . The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823 . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1975.
	RWB Lewis . Edith Wharton: A Biography . New York: Harper & Row, 1975.
1977	Alan Dawley . Class and Community: The Industrial Revolution in Lynn . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976.
	Robert A. Gross . The Minutemen and Their World . New York: Hill and Wang, 1976.
	Barry W. Higman . Slave Population and Economy in Jamaica, 1807-1834 . Cambridge, Eng .: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
1978	Alfred D. Chandler . The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977.
	Morton Horwitz . The Transformation of American Law, 1780-1860 . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977.
1979	Christopher Thorne . Allies of a Kind: The United States, Britain, and the War Against Japan, 1941-1945 . Oxford, Eng .: Oxford University Press, 1978.
	Anthony Wallace FC . Rockdale: The Growth of An American Village in the Early Industrial Revolution . New York: Alfred Knopf, 1978.
1980	Robert Dallek . Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932-1945 . Oxford, Eng .: Oxford University Press, 1979.
	Thomas Dublin . Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826-1860 . New York: Columbia University Press, 1979.
	Donald Worster . Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s . Oxford, Eng .: Oxford University Press, 1979.
1981	Ronald Steel . Walter Lipmann and the American Century . New York: Little, Brown, 1980.
	Jean Strouse . Alice James: A Biography . New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1980.
1982	Edward Countryman . A People in Revolution: The American Revolution and Political Society in New York, 1760–1790 . Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981.
	Mary P. Ryan . Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790-1865 . Cambridge, Eng .: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
1983	John Putnam Demos . Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England . Oxford, Eng .: Oxford University Press, 1982.
	Nick Salvatore . Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist . Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1982.
1984	Louis R. Harlan . Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901-1915 . Oxford, Eng .: Oxford University Press, 1982.
	Paul Starr . The Social Transformation of American Medicine: The Rise of a Sovereign Profession and the Making of a Vast Industry . New York: Basic Books, 1983.
1985	Suzanne Lebsock . The Free Women of Petersburg: Status and Culture in a Southern Town, 1784-1860 . New York: Norton, 1984.
	Kenneth Silverman . The Life and Times of Cotton Mather . New York: Harper & Row, 1984.
1986	Kenneth T. Jackson . Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States . Oxford, Eng .: Oxford University Press, 1985.
	Jacqueline Jones . Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present . New York: Basic Books, 1985.
1987	Thomas Doerflinger . A Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise: Merchants and Economic Development in Revolutionary Philadelphia . Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1986.
	Roger Lane . Roots of Violence in Black Philadelphia, 1860-1900 . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986.
1988	Michael S. Sherry . The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987.
	Peter Kolchin . Unfree Labor: American Slavery and Russian Serfdom . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.
1989	Eric Foner . Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 . New York: Harper & Row, 1988.
	Edmund S. Morgan . Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America . New York: WW Norton, 1988.
1990	James Merrell . The Indians' New World: Catawbas and Their Neighbors from European Contact through the Era of Removal . Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1989.
	Neil R. McMillen . Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow . Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1989.
1991	Lizabeth Cohen . Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939 . Cambridge, Eng .: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
	Laurel Thatcher Ulrich . A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990.
1992	William Cronon . Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West . New York: WW Norton, 1991.
	Charles Royster . The Destructive War: William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991.
1993	Charles Capper . The Private Years . Oxford, Eng .: Oxford University Press, 1992. Vol. 1 of Margaret Fuller: An American Romantic Life .
	Melvyn P. Leffler . A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War . Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992.
1994	Stanley Elkins , Eric McKitrick . The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788-1800 . Oxford, Eng .: Oxford University Press, 1993.
	Winthrop Jordan . Tumult and Silence at Second Creek: An Inquiry into a Civil War Slave Conspiracy . Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1993.
	David Levering Lewis . WEB DuBois: The Biography of a Race, 1868-1919 . New York: Henry Holt, 1993.
1995	John L. Brooke . The Refiner's Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644-1844 . Cambridge, Eng .: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
	John Dittmer . Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi . Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1994.
1996	Alan Taylor . William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995.
	David S. Reynolds . Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995.
1997	David E. Kyvig . Explicit and Authentic Acts: Amending the US Constitution, 1776-1795 . Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 1996.
	James T. Patterson . Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 . Oxford, Eng .: Oxford University Press, 1996.
1998	Christine Leigh Heyrman . Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.
	Walter LaFeber . The Clash: A History of US-Japan Relations . New York: WW Norton, 1997.
	Thomas Sugrue . The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997.
1999	Ira Berlin . Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.
	Philip D. Morgan . A Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Low Country . Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1998.
	Jill Lepore . The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998.
2000	James Merrell . Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the American Frontier . New York: WW Norton, 1999.
	John W. Dower . Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II . New York: WW Norton and The New Press, 1999.
	Linda Gordon . The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
2001	Michael A. Bellesiles . Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000. (withdrawn in 2002 due to scientific misconduct)
	Susan Lee Johnson . Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush . New York: WW Norton, 2000.
	David Nasaw . The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst . New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.
2002	David W. Blight . Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory . Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001.
	Alice Kessler-Harris . In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th-Century America . Oxford, Eng .: Oxford University Press, 2001.
2003	James F. Brooks . Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands . Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2002.
	Alan Gallay . The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670-1717 . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002.
2004	Edward L. Ayers . In the Presence of Mine Enemies: War in the Heart of America, 1859-1863 . New York: WW Norton, 2003.
	Steven Hahn . 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.
	George M. Marsden . Jonathan Edwards: A Life . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003.
2005	Melvin Patrick Ely . Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s Through the Civil War . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004.
	Michael Klarman . From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality . Oxford, Eng .: Oxford University Press, 2004.
	Michael O'Brien . Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810-1860 . Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2004.
2006	Erskine Clarke . Dwelling Place: A Plantation Epic . New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.
	Odd Arne Westad . The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times . Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
	Sean Wilentz . The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln . New York: WW Norton, 2005.
2007	Jack T. Kirby . Mockingbird Song: Ecological Landscapes of the South . Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.
	Robert D. Richardson . William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism . Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2006.
2008	Allan M. Brandt . The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product that Defined America . New York: Basic Books, 2007.
	Charles Postel . The populist vision . New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
	Peter Silver . Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America . New York: WW Norton, 2007.
2009	Thomas G. Andrews . Killing for Coal: America's Deadliest Labor War . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008.
	Drew Gilpin fist . This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.
	Pekka Hämäläinen . The Comanche Empire . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008.
2010	Linda Gordon . Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits . New York: WW Norton & Company, 2009.
	Woody Holton . Abigail Adams . New York: Free Press, 2009.
	Margaret D. Jacobs . 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.
2011	Sara Dubow . Ourselves Unborn: A History of the Fetus in Modern America . New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
	Eric Foner . The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery . New York: WW Norton & Company, 2010.
	Christopher Tomlins . Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580-1865 . Cambridge, Eng., And New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
2012	Anne F. Hyde . Empires, Nations and Families: A History of the North American West, 1800-1860. University of Nebraska, 2011.
	Daniel T. Rodgers . Age of Fracture. Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2011.
	Tomiko Brown-Nagin . Courage to Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Rights Movement. Oxford University Press, 2011.
2013	W. Jeffrey Bolster . The Mortal Sea: Fishing the Atlantic in the Age of Sail . Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2012.
	John Fabian Witt . Lincoln's Code: The Laws of War in American History . Free Press, 2012.
2014	Ira Katznelson . Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time . Liveright Publishing Corporation / WW Norton & Company, 2013.
	Ari Kelman . A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling over the Memory of Sand Creek . Harvard University Press, 2013.
2015	Sven Beckert . Empire of Cotton: A Global History. Alfred A. Knopf, 2014.
	Greg Grandin . The Empire of Necessity. Metropolitan Books / Henry Holt & Company, 2014.
2016	Deborah A. Rosen . Border Law: The First Seminole War and American Nationhood. Harvard University Press, 2015.
	Mary Sarah pictures . Madison's Hand: Revising the Constitutional Convention. Harvard University Press, 2015.
	Andrew Lipman . The Saltwater Frontier: Indians and the Contest for the American Coast. Yale University Press, 2015.
2017	Andrés Reséndez . The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016.
	Heather Ann Thompson . Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy. Pantheon Books, 2016.
	Nancy Tomes . Remaking the American Patient: How Madison Avenue and Modern Medicine Turned Patients into Consumers. University of North Carolina Press, 2016.
2018	Waldo Heinrichs , Marc Gallicchio . Implacable Foes: War in the Pacific, 1944-1945. Oxford University Press.
	Louis S. Warren . God's Red Son: The Ghost Dance Religion and the Making of Modern America. Basic Books.
	Douglas L. Winiarski . Darkness Falls on the Land of Light: Experiencing Religious Awakenings in Eighteenth-Century New England. The University of North Carolina Press, Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2017
2019	David W. Blight . Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. Simon & Schuster, 2018.
	Lisa Brooks . Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip's War. Yale University Press, 2019.
2020	Lizabeth Cohen . Saving America's Cities: Ed Logue and the Struggle to Renew Urban America in the Suburban Age. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019.
	Joseph P. Reidy . Illusions of Emancipation: The Pursuit of Freedom and Equality in the Twilight of Slavery. North Carolina Press, 2019.

Web links

• The Bancroft Prizes and Previous Awards at Columbia University (columbia.edu)

1. ^ Columbia University Libraries Announces the Winners of the 2020 Bancroft Prizes. In: columbia.edu. Columbia University Libraries, accessed March 20, 2020 .