Francis Parkman Prize
Encyclopedia
The Francis Parkman Prize, named after Francis Parkman
, is awarded by the Society of American Historians for the best book in American
history each year. Its purpose is to promote literary distinction in historical writing. The Society of American Historians is an affiliate of the American Historical Association
.
. A certificate is also presented to the publisher. The prize is awarded at the society's annual meeting in May.
Francis Parkman
Francis Parkman was an American historian, best known as author of The Oregon Trail: Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life and his monumental seven-volume France and England in North America. These works are still valued as history and especially as literature, although the biases of his...
, is awarded by the Society of American Historians for the best book in American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
history each year. Its purpose is to promote literary distinction in historical writing. The Society of American Historians is an affiliate of the American Historical Association
American Historical Association
The American Historical Association is the oldest and largest society of historians and professors of history in the United States. Founded in 1884, the association promotes historical studies, the teaching of history, and the preservation of and access to historical materials...
.
Eligibility
The book can be on any aspect of the history of what is now the United States. The author need not be a citizen or resident of the United States and the book need not be published in the U.S. The book's copyright must be in the previous year.The prize
In 2011 the prize consists of a certificate, 2,500 US dollars, and consideration for adoption in the History Book ClubBook of the Month Club
The Book of the Month Club is a United States mail-order book sales club that offers a new book each month to customers.The Book of the Month Club is part of a larger company that runs many book clubs in the United States and Canada. It was formerly the flagship club of Book-of-the-Month Club, Inc...
. A certificate is also presented to the publisher. The prize is awarded at the society's annual meeting in May.
Winners
- 1958 – Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. for The Crisis of the Old Order
- 1959 – Ernest SamuelsErnest SamuelsErnest Samuels was an American biographer and lawyer.Born in Chicago, he received his J.D. in 1926, but switched to literature in 1930. Nevertheless he did legal work as well for much of the 1930s. He might be best known for his biography of Henry Adams in three volumes...
for Henry Adams: The Middle Years - 1960 – Matthew JosephsonMatthew JosephsonMatthew Josephson was an American journalist and author of works on nineteenth-century French literature and twentieth-century American economic history.-Biography:...
for Edison: A Biography - 1961 – Elting E. Morison for Turmoil and Tradition: A Study of the Life and Times of Henry L. Stimson
- 1962 – Leon Wolff for Little Brown Brother: How the United States Purchased and Pacified the Philippine Islands at the Century's Turn
- 1963 – James Thomas FlexnerJames Thomas FlexnerJames Thomas Flexner was an American historian and author best known for his prize-winning four-volume biography of George Washington, which earned him a National Book Award and a special Pulitzer Prize citation...
for That Wilder Image: The Painting of America's Native School from Thomas Cole to Winslow Homer - 1964 – William LeuchtenburgWilliam LeuchtenburgWilliam E. Leuchtenburg is William Rand Kenan Jr. professor emeritus of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill at Chapel Hill and a leading scholar of the life and career of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He is the author of more than a dozen books on 20th century history ,...
for Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal - 1965 – Willie Lee Nichols Rose for Rehearsal for Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment
- 1966 – Daniel J. BoorstinDaniel J. BoorstinDaniel Joseph Boorstin was an American historian, professor, attorney, and writer. He was appointed twelfth Librarian of the United States Congress from 1975 until 1987.- Biography:...
for The Americans: The National Experience - 1967 – William H. GoetzmannWilliam H. GoetzmannWilliam H. Goetzmann was an award-winning historian and emeritus professor in the American Studies and American Civilization Programs at the University of Texas at Austin. He attended Yale University as a graduate student and was friends with Tom Wolfe while there...
for Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West - 1969 – Winthrop JordanWinthrop JordanWinthrop Donaldson Jordan was a professor of history and renowned writer on the history of slavery and the origins of racism in the United States....
for White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812 - 1970 – Theodore A. Wilson for The First Summit: Roosevelt and Churchill at Placentia Bay, 1941
- 1971 – James MacGregor BurnsJames MacGregor BurnsJames MacGregor Burns is an historian and political scientist, presidential biographer, and authority on leadership studies. He is the Woodrow Wilson Professor of Government Emeritus at Williams College and Distinguished Leadership Scholar at the of the School of Public Policy at the University...
for Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom,1940-1945 - 1972 – Joseph P. LashJoseph P. LashJoseph P. Lash was an American radical political activist, journalist, and author. A close friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, Lash won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography and the National Book Award in 1972 for Eleanor and Franklin, the first of two volumes he wrote about the former First Lady.-Early...
for Eleanor and Franklin: The Story of Their Relationship, based on Eleanor Roosevelt's Private Papers - 1973 – Kenneth S. DavisKenneth S. DavisKenneth Sydney Davis was a historian and university professor, most renowned for his series of biographies of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Davis also wrote biographies of Charles Lindbergh, Adlai Stevenson, and authored the first biography of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, entitled Dwight D...
for FDR: The Beckoning of Destiny, 1882-1928 - 1974 – Robert W. Johannsen for Stephen A. Douglas
- 1975 – Robert A. CaroRobert CaroRobert Allan Caro is an American journalist and author known for his celebrated biographies of United States political figures Robert Moses and Lyndon B. Johnson...
for The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York - 1976 – Edmund S. MorganEdmund MorganEdmund Sears Morgan , an eminent authority on early American history, is Emeritus Professor of History at Yale University, where he taught from 1955 to 1986.-Life:...
for American Slavery, American Freedom - 1977 – Irving HoweIrving HoweIrving Howe was an American literary and social critic and a prominent figure of the Democratic Socialists of America.-Life and career:...
for World of Our Fathers - 1978 – David McCulloughDavid McCulloughDavid Gaub McCullough is an American author, narrator, historian, and lecturer. He is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian award....
for The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914 - 1979 – R. David Edmunds for The Potawatomis: Keepers of the Fire
- 1980 – Leon F. Litwack for Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery
- 1981 – Charles RoysterCharles RoysterCharles Royster is an American historian, and Boyd Professor at Louisiana State University.-Life:He graduated from University of California, Berkeley with an A.B. in 1966, an M.A...
for A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and American Character, 1775-1783 - 1982 – William S. McFeelyWilliam S. McFeelyWilliam S. McFeely was a professor of history before his retirement in 1997.He received his B.A. from Amherst College in 1952, and Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University in 1966. He studied there with, among others, C. Vann Woodward, whose book "The Strange Career of Jim Crow" was a staple...
for Grant: A Biography - 1983 – John R. StilgoeJohn R. StilgoeJohn R. Stilgoe is an award-winning historian and photographer who is the Robert and Lois Orchard Professor in the History of Landscape at the Visual and Environmental Studies Department of Harvard University, where he has been teaching since 1977. He is also a fellow of the Society of American...
for Common Landscape of America, 1580-1845 - 1984 – William CrononWilliam CrononWilliam 'Bill' Cronon is the Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas Research Professor of History, Geography, and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison...
for Changes in the Land, Revised Edition: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England - 1985 – Joel Williamson for The Crucible of Race: Black-White Relations in the American South since Emancipation
- 1986 – Kenneth T. JacksonKenneth T. JacksonKenneth Terry Jackson is a professor of history and social sciences at Columbia University. A frequent television guest, he is best known as an urban historian and a preeminent authority on New York City, where he lives on the Upper West Side....
for Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United StatesCrabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United StatesCrabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States is a book written by Kenneth T. Jackson. Published in 1985, it analyzes the development of American suburbs from their origins in the early 19th century. Jackson examines how a high quality of life in America came to be equated with home... - 1987 – Michael G. KammenMichael KammenMichael Kammen is a professor of American cultural history in the Department of History at Cornell University. He was born in 1936 in Rochester, New York, grew up in the Washington, DC area, and was educated at the George Washington University and Harvard University . He has taught at Cornell...
for A Machine That Would Go of Itself: The Constitution in American Culture - 1988 – Eric Larrabee for Commander in Chief: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants, and Their War
- 1989 – Eric FonerEric FonerEric Foner is an American historian. On the faculty of the Department of History at Columbia University since 1982, he writes extensively on political history, the history of freedom, the early history of the Republican Party, African American biography, Reconstruction, and historiography...
for Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 - 1990 – Geoffrey C. WardGeoffrey WardGeoffrey Champion Ward is an author and screenwriter of various documentary presentations of American history. He graduated from Oberlin College in 1962.He was an editor of American Heritage magazine early in his career...
for A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt - 1991 – Paul E. Hoffman for A New Andalucia and a Way to the Orient: The American Southeast During the Sixteenth Century
- 1992 – Richard WhiteRichard White (historian)Richard White is an American historian, a past President of the Organization of American Historians, and the author of influential books on the American West, Native American history, and environmental history...
for The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 - 1993 – David McCulloughDavid McCulloughDavid Gaub McCullough is an American author, narrator, historian, and lecturer. He is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian award....
for Truman - 1994 – David Levering LewisDavid Levering LewisDavid Levering Lewis is the Julius Silver University Professor and Professor of History at New York University. He is twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography, for part one and part two of his biography of W. E. B. Du Bois...
for W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race,1868-1919 - 1995 – John Putnam DemosJohn Putnam DemosJohn Putnam Demos is an American author and historian. He has written two books which discuss witch-hunts and has discovered that one of his own ancestors was John Putnam Senior, ancestor of the Putnam family which was prominent in the Salem witch trials....
for The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America - 1996 – Robert D. Richardson, Jr.Robert D. RichardsonRobert D. Richardson is an American historian, and biographer.-Life:He was brought up in Medford, Massachusetts and Concord, Massachusetts.He graduated from Exeter, in 1952,and from Harvard University, with a PhD....
for Emerson: The Mind on Fire - 1997 – Drew Gilpin FaustDrew Gilpin FaustCatherine Drew Gilpin Faust is an American historian, college administrator, and the president of Harvard University. Faust is the first woman to serve as Harvard's president and the university's 28th president overall. Faust is the fifth woman to serve as president of an Ivy League university, and...
for Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War - 1998 – John M. BarryJohn M. BarryJohn M. Barry is an American author and historian, perhaps best known for his books on the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and the influenza pandemic of 1918....
for Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America - 1999 – Elliott West for The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, & the Rush to Colorado
- 2000 – David M. KennedyDavid M. Kennedy (historian)David M. Kennedy is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning historian specializing in American history. He is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History at Stanford University and the Director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West...
for Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 - 2001 – Fred AndersonFred AndersonFred Anderson may refer to:*Fred Anderson , former National Football League defensive lineman*Fred Anderson , Major League Baseball player...
for Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766 - 2002 – Louis MenandLouis MenandLouis Menand is an American writer and academic, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Metaphysical Club , an intellectual and cultural history of late 19th and early 20th century America....
for The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America - 2003 – James F. BrooksJames F. BrooksJames F. Brooks is an American historian whose work on slavery, captivity and kinship in the Southwest Borderlands was honored with major national history awards: the Bancroft Prize, Francis Parkman Prize, the Frederick Jackson Turner Award and the Frederick Douglass Prize...
for Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands - 2004 – Suzanne LebsockSuzanne LebsockSuzanne Lebsock is an award winning author and historian. Her works include her first book The Free Women of Petersburg: Status and Culture in a Southern Town, 1784-1860 which was published in 1984 and won the Bancroft Prize, and A Murder in Virginia: Southern Justice on Trial...
for A Murder in Virginia: Southern Justice on Trial - 2005 – Alan TrachtenbergAlan TrachtenbergAlan Trachtenberg is Neil Gray, Jr. Professor Emeritus of English and American Studies at Yale University. He received his Ph.D. in American Studies at the University of Minnesota. He is the husband of Betty Trachtenberg, former Dean of Students at Yale University, and father to Zev Trachtenberg,...
for Shades of Hiawatha: Staging Indians, Making Americans, 1880-1930 - 2006 – Megan MarshallMegan MarshallMegan Marshall is an American writer and scholar. She is best known as the author of The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism, which was published in 2005. The book earned her a place as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in biography in 2006.-Biography:Marshall was born in...
for The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism - 2007 – John H. Elliott for Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830
- 2008 – Jean Edward SmithJean Edward SmithJean Edward Smith, Ph.D is professor at Marshall University and biographer. Currently he is the John Marshall Professor of Political Science at Marshall University and professor emeritus at the University of Toronto after having served as professor of political economy there for thirty-five years...
for FDR - 2009 – Jared FarmerJared FarmerJared Farmer , is a history professor at Stony Brook University. He specializes in environmental history and the history of the American West.Farmer's book On Zion's Mount won the 2009 Francis Parkman Prize.- Bibliography :...
for On Zion's Mount: Mormons, Indians, and the American Landscape - 2010 – Blake BaileyBlake BaileyBlake Bailey is an American writer. He has written biographies of Richard Yates and John Cheever, and is the editor of the Library of America omnibus editions of Cheever's stories and novels.-Personal:...
for Cheever: A Life - 2011 – Jefferson Cowie for Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class
Francis Parkman Prize for Special Achievement
The Francis Parkman Prize for Special Achievement is periodically awarded for scholarly and professional distinction. Established in 1962, it has been awarded only five times.Winners
- 1994 - Walter LordWalter LordJohn Walter Lord, Jr. , was an American author, best known for his documentary-style non-fiction account A Night to Remember, about the sinking of the RMS Titanic.-Early life:...
- 1988 - Forrest PogueForrest PogueForrest Carlisle Pogue Jr. . Forrest C. Pogue was an official United States Army historian during World War II, and attained the rank of Master Sergeant. He may well have been one of the best-educated sergeants in the U.S. Army in World War II...
- 1974 - Alfred A. KnopfAlfred A. KnopfAlfred A. Knopf, Inc. is a New York publishing house, founded by Alfred A. Knopf, Sr. in 1915. It was acquired by Random House in 1960 and is now part of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group at Random House. The publishing house is known for its borzoi trademark , which was designed by co-founder...
- 1970 - Samuel Eliot MorisonSamuel Eliot MorisonSamuel Eliot Morison, Rear Admiral, United States Naval Reserve was an American historian noted for his works of maritime history that were both authoritative and highly readable. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1912, and taught history at the university for 40 years...
- 1962 - Allan NevinsAllan NevinsAllan Nevins was an American historian and journalist, renowned for his extensive work on the history of the Civil War and his biographies of such figures as President Grover Cleveland, Hamilton Fish, Henry Ford, and John D. Rockefeller.-Life:Born in Camp Point, Illinois, Nevins was educated at...