---

Bancroft Prizes

Table of Contents
Background to the Award. Award Winners. Resources.

I. Background to the Award.

 

Awarded annually by the trustees of Columbia University, the Bancroft Prize honors books written about diplomacy or the history of America. In his honor, Frederic Bancroft, a historian and a librarian, bequest that this award be created at Columbia (New York Times, Bancroft History Prizes). The first award was given in 1948 to Allan Nevins, Ordeal of the Union and Bernard DeVoto, Across the Wide Missouri. Prizes of equal standing are presented in both diplomacy and American history (Columbia University Libraries, Bancroft Prizes). Considered to be the most prestigious award within the American history field, the award winners receive a $10,000 stipend. To be eligible for nomination, books must have been published a year prior to the award year. One interesting fact about the award is that North, South, and Central American books are eligible for nomination as long as they are written in English or have an English translation (Columbia University Libraries, Bancroft Prizes). Below is a list of the winners by year.

 

---

 

II. Award Winners.

  

2008:

 

• Award:

  • The Populist Vision by Charles Postel, (Oxford University Press).

  • Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America by Peter Silver, (W. W. Norton).

 

2007:

 

• Award:

  • Mockingbird Song: Ecological Landscapes of the South by Jack Temple Kirby, (University of North Carolina Press).

  • William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism by Robert D. Richardson, (Houghton Mifflin).

 

 2006:

 

• Award:

  • Dwelling Place: A Plantation Epic by Erskine Clarke, published by Yale University Press

  • The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times by Odd Arne Westad (Cambridge University Press).

  • The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln by Sean Wilentz, (W. W. Norton).

 

 2005:

 

• Award:

  • Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s Through the Civil War by Melvin Patrick Ely, ( Alfred A. Knopf).

  • From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality by Michael J. Klarman, (Oxford University Press).

  • Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810-1860 by Michael O'Brien, (University of North Carolina Press).

 

 2004:

 

• Award:

  • In the Presence of Mine Enemies: War in the Heart of America, 1859-1863 by Edward L. Ayers, (W. W. Norton).

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

  • Jonathan Edwards: A Life by George M. Marsden, (Yale University Press).

 

 2003:

 

• Award:

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

  • The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670-1717 by Alan Gallay, (Yale University Press).

 

 2002:

 

• Award:

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

  • In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th-Century America by Alice Kessler-Harris, (Oxford University Press).

 

 2001:

 

• Award:

  • Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush by Susan Lee Johnson, (W. W. Norton).

  • The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst by David Nasaw, (Houghton Mifflin).

 

 2000:

 

• Award:

  • Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the American Frontier by James H. Merrell, (W. W. Norton).

  • Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II by John W. Dower, (W. Norton and The New Press).

  • The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction by Linda Gordon, (Harvard University Press).

 

 1999:

 

• Award:

  • Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America by Ira Berlin,(Harvard University Press).

  • A Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Low Country by Philip D. Morgan, (University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture).

  • The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity by Jill Lepore, (Alfred A. Knopf).

 

 1998:

 

• Award:

  • Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt by Christine Leigh  Heyrman, (Alfred A. Knopf).

  • The Clash: A History of U.S.-Japan Relations by Walter LaFeber, (W. W. Norton).

  • The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit by Thomas J. Sugrue, (Princeton University Press).

 

 1997:

 

• Award:

  • Explicit and Authentic Acts: Amending the U.S. Constitution, 1776-1795 by David E. Kyvig, (University of Kansas Press).

  • Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 by James T. Patterson, (Oxford University Press).

 

 1996:

 

• Award:

  • William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic by Alan Taylor, (Alfred A. Knopf).

  • Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography by David S. Reynolds, (Alfred A. Knopf).

 

 1995:

 

• Award:

  • The Refiner's Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644-1844 by John L. Brooke, (Cambridge University Press).

  • Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi by John Dittmer, (University of Illinois Press).

 

 1994:

 

• Award:

  • The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788-1800 by Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick,(Oxford University Press).

  • Tumult and Silence at Second Creek: An Inquiry into a Civil War Slave Conspiracy by Winthrop D. Jordan, (Louisiana State University Press).

  • W. E. B. DuBois: The Biography of a Race, 1868-1919 by David Levering Lewis, (Henry Holt).

 

 1993:

 

• Award:

  • Margaret Fuller: An American Romantic Life Vol 1: The Private Years by Charles Capper, (Oxford University Press). 

  • A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War by Melvyn P. Leffler, (Stanford University Press).

 

 1992:

 

• Award:

  • Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West by William Cronon, (W. W. Norton).

  • The Destructive War: William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans by Charles Royster, (Alfred A. Knopf).

 

 1991:

 

• Award:

  • Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939 by Lizabeth Cohen, (Cambridge University Press).

  • A Midwife's Tale: The Life Of Martha Ballard, Based On Her Diary, 1785-1812 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, (Alfred A. Knopf).

 

 1990:

 

• Award:

  • The Indians' New World: Catawbas and Their Neighbors from European Contact through the Era of Removal by James H. Merrell(University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture).

  • Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow by Neil R. McMillen, (University of Illinois Press).

 

 1989:

 

• Award:

  • Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 by Eric Foner, (Harper & Row).

  • Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America by Edmund S. Morgan, (W. W. Norton).

 

 1988:

 

• Award:

  • The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon by Michael S. Sherry, (Yale University Press).

  • Unfree Labor: American Slavery and Russian Serfdom by Peter Kolchin, (Harvard University Press).

 

 1987:

 

• Award:

  • A Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise: Merchants and Economic Development in Revolutionary Philadelphia by Thomas Doerflinger, (University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture).

  • Roots of Violence in Black Philadelphia, 1860-1900 by Roger Lane, (Harvard University Press).

 

 1986:

 

• Award:

  • Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States by Kenneth T. Jackson, (Oxford University Press).

  • Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present by Jacqueline Jones, (Basic Books).

 

 1985:

 

• Award:

  • The Free Women of Petersburg: Status and Culture in a Southern Town, 1784-1860 by Suzanne Lebsock, (Norton).

  • The Life and Times of Cotton Mather by Kenneth Silverman, (Harper & Row).

 

 1984:

 

• Award:

  • Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901-1915 by Louis R. Harlan, (Oxford University Press).

  • The Social Transformation Of American Medicine: The Rise of a Sovereign Profession and the Making of a Vast Industry by Paul Starr, ( Basic Books).

 

 1983:

 

• Award:

  • Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England by John Putnam Demos, (Oxford University Press).

  • Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist by Nick Salvatore, ( University of Illinois Press).

 

 1982:

 

• Award:

  • A People in Revolution: The American Revolution and Political Society in New York, 1760-1790 by Edward Countryman, ( The Johns Hopkins University Press).

  • Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790-1865 by Mary P. Ryan, ( Cambridge University Press).

 

 1981:

 

• Award:

  • Walter Lipmann and the American Century by Ronald Steel, (Little, Brown).

  • Alice James: A Biography by Jean Strouse, (Houghton Mifflin).

 

 1980:

 

• Award:

  • Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932-1945 by Robert Dallek, (Oxford University Press).

  • Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826-1860 by Thomas Dublin,(Columbia University Press).

  • Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s by Donald Worster, (Oxford University Press).

 

 1979:

 

• Award:

  • Allies of a Kind: The United States, Britain, and the War Against Japan, 1941-1945 by Christopher Thorne, (Oxford University Press).

  • Rockdale: The Growth of An American Village in the Early Industrial Revolution by Anthony F. C. Wallace, (Alfred Knopf).

 

 1978:

 

• Award:

  • The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business by Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., (Harvard University Press).

  • The Transformation of American Law, 1780-1860 by Morton J. Horwitz, (Harvard University Press).

 

 1977:

 

• Award:

  • Class and Community: The Industrial Revolution in Lynn by Alan  Dawley, (Harvard University Press).
  • The Minutemen and Their World by Robert A. Gross, (Hill and Wang).

  • Slave Population and Economy in Jamaica, 1807-1834 by Barry W. Higman, (Cambridge University Press).

 

 1976:

 

• Award:

  • The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823 by David Brion Davis, (Cornell University Press).

  • Edith Wharton: A Biography by R. W. B. Lewis, (Harper & Row).

 

 1975:

 

• Award:

  • Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery and Time on the Cross: Evidence and Methods by Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, (Atlantic, Little, Brown).

  • Deterrence in American Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice by Alexander L. George, and Richard Smoke, (Columbia University Press).

  • Roll, Jordan, Roll by Eugene Genovese, (Pantheon).

 

 1974:

 

• Award:

  • Frederick Jackson Turner: Historian, Scholar, Teacher by Ray Allen Billington, (Oxford University Press).

  • The Devil and John Foster Dulles by Townsend Hoopes, (Atlantic, Little, Brown).

  • The Other Bostonians: Poverty and Progress in the American Metropolis, 1880-1970 by Stephan Thernstrom, (Harvard University Press).

 

 1973:

 

• Award:

  • Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam by Frances FitzGerald, (Atlantic, Little, Brown).

  • The United States and the Origins of the Cold War by John Lewis Gaddis, (Columbia University Press).

  • Booker T. Washington by Louis R. Harlan, (Oxford University Press).

 

 1972:

 

• Award:

  • Neither Black Nor White by Carl N. Degler, (Macmillan).

  • The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596-1728 by Robert Middlekauff, (Oxford University Press).

  • The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages by Samuel E. Morison, (Oxford University Press).

     

 

 1971:

 

• Award:

  • The Image Empire: A History of Broadcasting in the United States from 1953. Vol. III by Erik Barnouw, (Oxford University Press).

  • Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger by David M. Kennedy, (Yale University Press).

  • Andrew Carnegie by Joseph Frazier Wall, (Oxford University Press).

 

 1970:

 

• Award:

  • Charles Willson Peale by Charles Sellers, (Charles Scribner's Sons).

  • The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 by Gordon S.Wood, (University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture).

  • Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South by Dan T. Carter, (Louisiana State University Press).

 

 1969:

 

• Award:

  • White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro 1550-1812 by Winthrop D. Jordan, (University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture).

  • Woodrow Wilson and World Politics: America's Response to War and Revolution by N. Gordon Levin Jr., (Oxford University Press).

  • The Brains Trust by Rexford Guy Tugwell, (The Viking Press).

 

 1968:

 

• Award:

  • A History of Negro Education in the South From 1619 to the Present by Henry Allen Bullock, (Harvard University Press).

  • From Puritan to Yankee: Character and Social Order in Connecticut 1690-1765 by Richard L. Bushman, (Harvard University Press).

  • The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution by Bernard Bailyn, (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press).

     

 

 1967:

 

• Award:

  • Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, 1816-1836 by William W. Freehling, (Harper & Row).

  • James K. Polk, The Continentalist 1843-1846, Volume II by Charles Sellers, (Princeton University Press).

  • The Washington Community 1800-1828 by James Sterling Young, (Columbia University Press).

     

 

 1966:

 

• Award:

  • The Peacemakers: The Great Powers and American Independence by Richard B. Morris, (Harper & Row).

  • Between Two Empires: The Ordeal of the Philippines, 1929-1946 by Theodore W. Friend III, (Yale University Press). 

 

 1965:

 

• Award:

  • Castlereagh and Adams: England and the United States, 1812-1823 by Bradford Perkins, (University of California Press).

  • Portrait of a General: Sir Henry Clinton in the War of Independence by William B. Willcox, (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.).

  • The United States and the Far Eastern Crisis of 1933-1938 by Dorothy Borg, (Harvard University Press).

 

 1964:

 

• Award:

  • Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940 by William E. Leuchtenburg, (Harper & Row).

  • The Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison by John L. Thomas, (Little, Brown and Company).

  • Power, Freedom, and Diplomacy: The Foreign Policy of the United States of America by Paul Seabury, (Random House).

 

 1963:

 

• Award:

  • John Adams by Page Smith, (Doubleday & Company, Inc.).

  • Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision by Roberta Wohlstetter, (Stanford University Press).

  • The Might of Nations: World Politics In Our Time by John G. Stoessinger, (Random House).

 

 1962:

 

• Award:

  • The Transformation of the School by Lawrence A. Cremin, (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.).

  • To the Farewell Address: Ideas of Early American Foreign Policy by Felix Gilbert, (Princeton University Press).

  • Charles Francis Adams, 1807-1866 by Martin B. Duberman, (Houghton Mifflin Company).

 

 1961:

 

• Award:

  • The Jefferson Image in the American Mind by Merrill D. Peterson, (Oxford University Press).

  • Wilson: The Struggle for Neutrality, 1914-1915 by Arthur S. Link, (Princeton University Press).

 

1960:

 

• Award:

  • The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760-1800 by R. R. Palmer, (Princeton University Press).

  • In the Days of McKinley by Margaret Leech, (Harper & Brothers).

     

 1959:

 

• Award:

  • Henry Adams, The Middle Years by Ernest Samuels, (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press).

  • The Americans: A Colonial Experience by Daniel J. Boorstin, (Random House).

 

 1958:

 

• Award:

  • The Crisis of the Old Order by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., (Houghton Mifflin Company).

  • A History of American Magazine, Volume IV by Frank Luther Mott, (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press)

 

 1957:

 

• Award:

  • Russia Leaves the War by George F. Kennan, (Princeton University Press).

  • Wilson: The New Freedom by Arthur S. Link, (Princeton University Press).

     

 1956:

 

• Award:

  • Henry Adams by Elizabeth Stevenson, (The Macmillan Company).

  • Last Full Measure: Lincoln the President by J. G. Randall and Richard N. Current, (Dodd, Mead & Company).

 

 1955:

 

• Award:

  • Grand River, The Rio Grande by Paul Horgan, (Rinehart & Company, Inc.).

  • The Jacksonians by Leonard D. White, (The Macmillan Company).

 

 1954:

 

• Award:

  • Seedtime of the Republic by Clinton Rossiter, (Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc.).

  • The Undeclared War by William L. Langer and S. Everett Gleason, (Harper & Brothers).

     

 1953:

 

• Award:

  • The Era of Good Feelings by George Dangerfield, (Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc.).

  • Rendezvous With Destiny by Eric F. Goldman, (Alfred A. Knopf). 

 

 1952:

 

• Award:

  • Charles Evans Hughes by Merlo J. Pusey, (The Macmillan Company).

  • Origins of the New South, 1877-1913 by C. Vann Woodward, (Louisiana State University Press).

     

 1951:

 

• Award:

  • Our More Perfect Union by Arthur N. Holcombe, (Harvard University Press).

  • Virgin Land by Henry N. Smith, (Harvard University Press).

     

 

 1950:

 

• Award:

  • The Great War for the Empire, Volume VII: The Victorious Year. 1758-1760 by Lawrence H. Gipson, (Alfred A. Knopf).

  • Coronado by Herbert E. Bolton, (Whittlesey House and the University of New Mexico Press).

 

 1949:

 

• Award:

  • Roosevelt and Hopkins by Robert E. Sherwood, (Harper & Brothers).

  • The Rising Sun in the Pacific by Samuel E. Morison, (Little, Brown and Company).

     

 1948:

 

• Award:

  • Ordeal of the Union by Allan Nevins, (Charles Scribner and Sons).

  • Across the Wide Missouri by Bernard Devoto, (Houghton Mifflin Company).

     

(List adapted from Bancroft Previous Winners)

 

---

 

III. Resources.

 

Columbia University Libraries. (2008). The Bancroft Prizes: Description and Guidelines. Retrieved on April 22, 2008 from http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/eguides/amerihist/bancroft.html

 

Columbia University Libraries. (2008). The Bancroft Prizes: Previous Winners. Retrieved on April 22, 2008 from http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/eguides/amerihist/bancroftlist.html

 

New York Times. (April 1988). Columbia U. Awards Bancroft History Prizes. Retrieved on April 22, 2008 from http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE4DF163BF934A35757C0A96E948260

 

Categories: Library Book Awards