Pulitzer Prize / story
The Pulitzer Prize for History (American History Award) has been awarded since 1917 for the best book on American history. The original category description was: "For the best book of the year on the history of the United States." ("For the best book of the year upon the history of the United States.") As this description does not correspond to the basic provision from Pulitzer's will It was mentioned that the award was to be given only to Americans, and those responsible for selecting the winners overlooked this provision, the Pulitzer Prize for History was given to a Frenchman in its first year. In 1919, 1984 and 1994 there were no winners.
List of award winners
1917-1919
- 1917: With Americans of Past and Present Days by Jean Jules Jusserand
- 1918: A History of the Civil War, 1861–1865 by James Ford Rhodes
- 1919: Not awarded.
- The jury recommended that the Advisory Board (Advisory Board) to award a prize, because they are not capable saw to select a book that is so important written right away, or so good that there was no doubt deserves a prize.
1920-1929
- 1920: The War with Mexico by Justin Harvey Smith
- 1921: The Victory at Sea by William S. Sims and Burton J. Hendrick
- 1922: The Founding of New England by James Truslow Adams
- 1923: The Supreme Court in United States History by Charles Warren
- 1924: The American Revolution: A Constitutional Interpretation by Charles Howard McIlwain
- 1925: History of the American Frontier by Frederic L. Paxson
- 1926: A History of the United States by Edward Channing .
- Since the jurors could only agree on a list of finalists, Channing's book was selected by the Advisory Board .
- 1927: Pinckney's Treaty by Samuel Flagg Bemis
- 1928: Main Currents in American Thought by Vernon Louis Parrington
- 1929: The Organization and Administration of the Union Army, 1861-1865 by Fred Albert Shannon
1930-1939
- 1930: The War of Independence by Claude H. Van Tyne .
- After the jurors had come to the conclusion that the prize should not be awarded, but ultimately submitted two works to the Advisory Board as a proposal , the Advisory Board selected Van Tyne as the winner, who, however, had been suggested by the jury as runner-up.
- 1931: The Coming of the War, 1914 by Bernadotte Everly Schmitt
- 1932: My Experiences in the World War by John J. Pershing
- 1933: The Significance of Sections in American History by Frederick Jackson Turner
- 1934: The People's Choice by Herbert Agar
- 1935: The Colonial Period of American History by Charles McLean Andrews
- 1936: A Constitutional History of the United States by Andrew C. McLaughlin
- 1937: The Flowering of New England, 1815-1865 by Van Wyck Brooks
- 1938: The Road to Reunion, 1865-1900 by Paul Herman Buck
- 1939: A History of American Magazines by Frank Luther Mott
1940-1949
- 1940: Abraham Lincoln: The War Years by Carl Sandburg
- 1941: The Atlantic Migration, 1607-1860 by Marcus Lee Hansen
- 1942: Reveille in Washington, 1860–1865 by Margaret Leech
- 1943: Paul Revere and the World He Lived In by Esther Forbes
- 1944: The Growth of American Thought by Merle Curti
- 1945: Unfinished Business by Stephen Bonsal .
- Bonsal's work was not on the jury's list of finalists; the advisory board rejected all of the jury's proposals and made use of its right to choose the winner itself.
- 1946: The Age of Jackson by Arthur M. Schlesinger
- 1947: Scientists Against Time by James Phinney Baxter III
- 1948: Across the Wide Missouri by Bernard DeVoto
- 1949: The Disruption of American Democracy by Roy Franklin Nichols
1950-1959
- 1950: Art and Life in America by Oliver Waterman Larkin .
- With Larkin, the advisory board did not follow the jury report, which saw the work in 2nd place.
- 1951: The Old Northwest, Pioneer Period 1815-1840 by R. Carlyle Buley
- 1952: The Uprooted by Oscar Handlin
- 1953: The Era of Good Feelings by George Dangerfield
- 1954: A Stillness at Appomattox by Bruce Catton .
- With Catton as a former reporter and government employee, the advisory board overruled the choice of jurors and awarded the prize to a historian who had not studied.
- 1955: Great River: The Rio Grande in North American History by Paul Horgan
- 1956: The Age of Reform by Richard Hofstadter
- 1957: Russia Leaves the War: Soviet-American Relations, 1917–1920 by George F. Kennan
- 1958: Banks and Politics in America by Bray Hammond
- 1959: The Republican Era: 1869–1901 by Leonard D. White and Jean Schneider .
- The judges recommended that the entire book series (which also includes The Federalists , The Jeffersonians, and The Jacksonians ) be awarded the Pulitzer Prize because they established administrative history as a new field of history at the time.
1960-1969
- 1960: In the Days of McKinley by Margaret Leech .
- With Margaret Leech, the advisory board overruled the jury, who had only seen the book in 3rd place. The jury had justified their choice with the fact that Leech had described the McKinley time largely uncritical.
- 1961: Between War and Peace: The Potsdam Conference by Herbert Feis
- 1962: The Triumphant Empire: Thunder-Clouds Gather in the West, 1763–1766 by Lawrence Henry Gipson
- 1963: Washington, Village and Capital, 1800–1878 by Constance McLaughlin Green
- 1964: Puritan Village: The Formation of a New England Town by Sumner Chilton Powell
- 1965: The Greenback Era by Irwin Unger .
- In their selection of the three finalists, the jurors considered it very difficult to choose a favorite; however, with Unger, who was third on this list, the advisory board decided on a different winner.
- 1966: The Life of the Mind in America by Perry Miller .
- Perry Miller was a finalist in the Pulitzer Prize for History in the 1950s. Two of the three jurors had chosen a different winner; the third juror, followed by the advisory board, saw Miller's book as a new perspective on a topic that would lead to ongoing discussion and reflection.
- 1967: Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West by William H. Goetzmann
- 1968: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution by Bernard Bailyn
- 1969: Origins of the Fifth Amendment by Leonard Levy
1970-1979
- 1970: Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department by Dean Acheson
- 1971: Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom by James MacGregor Burns
- 1972: Neither Black Nor White by Carl Neumann Degler
- 1973: People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization by Michael Kammen
- 1974: The Americans: The Democratic Experience by Daniel J. Boorstin
- 1975: Jefferson and His Time by Dumas Malone .
- Malone was not nominated by the jury as a Pulitzer Prize winner, but in addition to the three finalists as a recommendation for a “special citation”. The advisory board had surprisingly chosen Malone as the Pulitzer Prize winner.
- 1976: Lamy of Santa Fe by Paul Horgan
- 1977: The Impending Crisis, 1841–1867 by David M. Potter , posthumously (completed and edited by Don E. Fehrenbacher)
- 1978: The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business by Alfred D. Chandler, Jr.
- 1979: The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics by Don E. Fehrenbacher
1980-1989
- 1980: Been in the Storm So Long by Leon Litwack .
- This year, the jury did not make a placement, but instead suggested the three finalists equally.
- 1981: American Education: The National Experience, 1783-1876 by Lawrence A. Cremin
- 1982: Mary Chesnut's Civil War by C. Vann Woodward
- 1983: The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790 by Rhys Isaac
- 1984: not awarded,
- the jurors agreed in their first meeting that "1983 was not a strong year in history and that it would be difficult to select a work that stood out to the point that it deserved this award." The advisory board followed this assessment.
- 1985: Prophets of Regulation by Thomas K. McCraw
- 1986: ... the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age by Walter A. McDougall
- 1987: Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution by Bernard Bailyn .
- Bailyn had already won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1968.
- 1988: The Launching of Modern American Science, 1846–1876 by Robert V. Bruce
- 1989: Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James M. McPherson
- 1989: Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954–1963 by Taylor Branch .
- For the first time, the award in this category was given to two authors.
1990-1999
- 1990: In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines by Stanley Karnow
- 1991: A Midwife's Tale by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
- 1992: The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties by Mark E. Neely, Jr.
- 1993: The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon S. Wood
- 1994: not awarded,
- the three finalists selected by the jurors were not accepted by the advisory board, so it decided not to award a prize in this category.
- 1995: No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II by Doris Kearns Goodwin
- 1996: William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic by Alan Taylor
- 1997: Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution by Jack N. Rakove
- 1998: Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion by Edward J. Larson
- 1999: Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace
2000-2009
- 2000: Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 by David M. Kennedy
- 2001: Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation by Joseph J. Ellis
- 2002: The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America by Louis Menand
- 2003: An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa 1942–1943 by Rick Atkinson
- 2004: A Nation Under Our Feet by Steven Hahn
- 2005: Washington's Crossing by David Hackett Fischer
- 2006: Polio: An American Story by David Oshinsky
- 2007: The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff
- 2008: What Hath God Wrought by Daniel Walker Howe
- 2009: The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed
2010-2019
- 2010: Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed
- 2011: The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery by Eric Foner
- 2012: Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable
- 2013: Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam by Fredrik Logevall
- 2014: The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772–1832 by Alan Taylor
- 2015: Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People by Elizabeth A. Fenn
- 2016: Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America by TJ Stiles
- 2017: Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy by Heather Ann Thompson
- 2018: The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea by Jack E. Davis
- 2019: Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight
2020-2029
- 2020: Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America by W. Caleb McDaniel
Web links
- Award winners and nominees (English)
Individual evidence
- Heinz-D. Fischer, Erika J. Fischer: Complete Historical Handbook of the Pulitzer Prize System 1917-2000. Volume 17: Decision Making Processes in all Award Categories based on unpublished Sources. de Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-093912-5 , pp. 303–327 (accessed online from de Gruyter ).