The Francis Parkman Prize, named after

Francis Parkman Francis Parkman Jr. (September 16, 1823 – November 8, 1893) 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 Am ...

, is awarded by the

Society of American Historians The Society of American Historians, founded in 1939, encourages and honors literary distinction in the writing of history and biography about American topics. The approximately 300 members include professional historians, independent scholars, jou ...

for the best book in

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

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 The American Historical Association (AHA) is the oldest professional association of historians in the United States and the largest such organization in the world. Founded in 1884, the AHA works to protect academic freedom, develop professional s ...

Eligibility

The Parkman Prize is offered annually to a non-fiction book, including biography, that is distinguished by its literary merit and makes an important contribution to 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 The author need not be a citizen or resident of the United States, and the book need not be published in the United States. Textbooks, edited collections, bibliographies, reference works, and juvenile books are ineligible. The book's copyright must be in the previous year.

The prize

In 2013 the prize consisted of a certificate and $2,000. A certificate is also presented to the publisher. The prize is awarded at the society's annual meeting in May.

Winners

*1957 –

George F. Kennan George Frost Kennan (February 16, 1904 – March 17, 2005) was an American diplomat and historian. He was best known as an advocate of a policy of containment of Soviet expansion during the Cold War. He lectured widely and wrote scholarly hist ...

for '' Russia Leaves the War'' *1958 –

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Arthur Meier Schlesinger Jr. (; born Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger; October 15, 1917 – February 28, 2007) was an American historian, social critic, and public intellectual. The son of the influential historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. and a s ...

for ''The Crisis of the Old Order'' *1959 –

Ernest Samuels Ernest Samuels (May 19, 1903 in Chicago, Illinois – February 12, 1996 in Evanston, Illinois) was an American biographer and lawyer. Life Born in Chicago, he received his Ph.B. in 1923 and J.D. in 1926 from the University of Chicago. He move ...

for ''Henry Adams: The Middle Years'' *1960 –

Matthew Josephson Matthew Josephson (February 15, 1899 – March 13, 1978) was an American journalist and author of works on nineteenth-century French literature and American political and business history of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Josephson popu ...

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 Flexner James Thomas Flexner (January 13, 1908 – February 13, 2003) was an American historian and biographer best known for the four-volume biography of George Washington that earned him a National Book Award in Biography

for ''That Wilder Image: The Painting of America's Native School from Thomas Cole to Winslow Homer'' *1964 – William Leuchtenburg for ''Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal'' *1965 – Willie Lee Nichols Rose for ''Rehearsal for Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment'' *1966 –

Daniel J. Boorstin Daniel Joseph Boorstin (October 1, 1914 – February 28, 2004) was an American historian at the University of Chicago who wrote on many topics in American and world history. He was appointed the twelfth Librarian of the United States Congress in ...

for ''The Americans: The National Experience'' *1967 – William H. Goetzmann for ''Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West'' *1969 –

Winthrop Jordan Winthrop Donaldson Jordan (November 11, 1931 – February 23, 2007) was an American historian and professor who specialized in the history of slavery in the United States and racism against Black Americans. His 1968 work ''White Over Black: ...

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 Burns for '' Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom, 1940-1945'' *1972 – Joseph P. Lash for ''Eleanor and Franklin: The Story of Their Relationship, based on Eleanor Roosevelt's Private Papers'' *1973 – Kenneth S. Davis for ''FDR: The Beckoning of Destiny, 1882-1928'' *1974 – Robert W. Johannsen for ''Stephen A. Douglas'' *1975 – Robert A. Caro for '' The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York'' *1976 – Edmund S. Morgan for ''American Slavery, American Freedom'' *1977 –

Irving Howe Irving Howe (; June 11, 1920 – May 5, 1993) was an American literary and social critic and a prominent figure of the Democratic Socialists of America. Early years Howe was born as Irving Horenstein in The Bronx, New York. He was the son of ...

for ''World of Our Fathers'' *1978 –

David McCullough David Gaub McCullough (; July 7, 1933 – August 7, 2022) was an American popular historian. He was a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. In 2006, he was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States ...

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 Leon Frank Litwack (December 2, 1929 – August 5, 2021) was an American historian whose scholarship focused on slavery, the Reconstruction Era of the United States, and its aftermath into the 20th century. He won a National Book Award, the Pulitz ...

for ''Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery'' *1981 – Charles Royster for ''A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and American Character, 1775-1783'' *1982 –

William S. McFeely William Shield McFeely (September 25, 1930 – December 11, 2019) was an American historian known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1981 biography of Ulysses S. Grant, as well as his contributions to a reevaluation of the Reconstruction era, and fo ...

for ''Grant: A Biography'' *1983 – John R. Stilgoe for ''Common Landscape of America, 1580-1845'' *1984 –

William Cronon William Cronon (born September 11, 1954 in New Haven, Connecticut) is an environmental historian and the Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas Research Professor of History, Geography, and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madi ...

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. Jackson Kenneth Terry Jackson (born 1939) is a professor emeritus 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 the history of New York City, where ...

for '' Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States'' *1987 – Michael G. Kammen 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 Foner Eric Foner (; born February 7, 1943) is an American historian. He writes extensively on American political history, the history of freedom, the early history of the Republican Party, African-American biography, the American Civil War, Reconstruc ...

for '' Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877'' *1990 –

Geoffrey C. Ward Geoffrey Champion Ward (born 1940) is an American editor, author, historian and writer of scripts for American history documentaries for public television. He is the author or co-author of 19 books, including 10 companion books to the documentar ...

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 White for ''The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815'' *1993 –

for '' Truman'' *1994 –

David Levering Lewis David Levering Lewis (born May 25, 1936) is an American historian, a Julius Silver University Professor, and a professor of history at New York University. He is twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography, for ...

for '' W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919'' *1995 –

John Putnam Demos John Putnam Demos is an American author and historian. He has written two books that discuss witch hunts and has discovered that one of his ancestors was John Putnam Senior, a member of the Putnam family that was prominent in the Salem witch trials ...

for ''The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America'' *1996 – Robert D. Richardson, Jr. for ''Emerson: The Mind on Fire'' *1997 –

Drew Gilpin Faust Catharine Drew Gilpin Faust (born September 18, 1947) is an American historian and was the 28th president of Harvard University, the first woman to serve in that role. She was Harvard's first president since 1672 without an undergraduate or gradu ...

for ''Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War'' *1998 –

John M. Barry John M. Barry (born 1947) is an American author and historian who has written books on the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, the influenza pandemic of 1918, and the development of the modern form of the ideas of separation of church and state and i ...

for ''Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America'' *1999 –

Elliott West Elliott West (born April 19, 1945) is an American historian and author. He studies the history of the American West. Biography West grew up in a family of journalists. His father was an editor for the ''Dallas Morning News'', and his brother was a ...

for ''The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, & the Rush to Colorado'' *2000 – David M. Kennedy for '' Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945'' *2001 – Fred Anderson for ''Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766'' *2002 –

Louis Menand Louis Menand (; born January 21, 1952) is an American critic, essayist, and professor, best known for his Pulitzer-winning book '' The Metaphysical Club'' (2001), 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. Brooks James 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 th ...

for ''Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands'' *2004 –

Suzanne Lebsock Suzanne Lebsock (born December 1, 1949 at Williston, ND) is an American 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 ...

for ''A Murder in Virginia: Southern Justice on Trial'' *2005 –

Alan Trachtenberg Alan Zelick Trachtenberg (March 22, 1932 – August 18, 2020) was an American historian and the Neil Gray Jr. Professor of English and professor emeritus of American Studies at Yale University. Born in Philadelphia, Trachtenberg attended Temple Un ...

for ''Shades of Hiawatha: Staging Indians, Making Americans, 1880-1930'' *2006 – Megan Marshall for ''The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism'' *2007 –

John H. Elliott Sir John Huxtable Elliott (23 June 1930 – 10 March 2022) was a British historian and Hispanist who was Regius Professor Emeritus at the University of Oxford and honorary fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, and Trinity College, Cambridge. H ...

for ''Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830'' *2008 – Jean Edward Smith for ''FDR'' *2009 –

Jared Farmer Jared Farmer (born 1974) is the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. He specializes in environmental history, landscape studies, and the North American West. Biography Jared Farmer gained his BA from Utah ...

for ''On Zion's Mount: Mormons, Indians, and the American Landscape'' *2010 –

Blake Bailey John Blake Bailey (born July 1, 1963) is an American writer and educator. Bailey is known for his literary biographies of Richard Yates, John Cheever, Charles Jackson, and Philip Roth. He is the editor of the Library of America omnibus editio ...

for ''Cheever: A Life'' *2011 – Jefferson Cowie for ''Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class'' *2012 – Richard White for ''Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America'' *2013 - Fredrik Logevall for '' Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam'' *2014 - Philip Shenon for ''A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination'' *2015 -

Danielle Allen Danielle Susan Allen (born November 3, 1971) is the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University. She is also the Director of the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics. Prior to joining the faculty at Harvard in 2015, Allen ...

for ''Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality'' *2016 - Christine Leigh Heyrman for ''American Apostles: When Evangelicals Entered the World of Islam'' *2017 - Joe Jackson for ''Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary'' *2018 - Christina Snyder for ''Great Crossings: Indians, Settlers & Slaves in the Age of Jackson'' *2019 - David W. Blight for '' Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom'' *2020 - Charles King for ''Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century'' *2021 - Christopher Tomlins for ''In the Matter of Nat Turner: A Speculative History'' *2022 - Nicole Eustace for ''Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America''.

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 Lord * 1988 - Forrest Pogue * 1974 -

Alfred A. Knopf Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. () is an American publishing house that was founded by Alfred A. Knopf Sr. and Blanche Knopf in 1915. Blanche and Alfred traveled abroad regularly and were known for publishing European, Asian, and Latin American writers i ...

* 1970 -

Samuel Eliot Morison Samuel Eliot Morison (July 9, 1887 – May 15, 1976) was an American historian noted for his works of maritime history and American history that were both authoritative and popular. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1912, and tau ...

* 1962 -

Allan Nevins Joseph Allan Nevins (May 20, 1890 – March 5, 1971) was an American historian and journalist, known for his extensive work on the history of the Civil War and his biographies of such figures as Grover Cleveland, Hamilton Fish, Henry Ford, and J ...

References

{{reflist

External links

Francis Parkman Prize at the Society of American Historians

Society of American Historians

Francis Parkman Prize at lovethebook
Historiography of the United States American history awards History books about the United States American Historical Association

Eligibility

The prize

Winners

Francis Parkman Prize for Special Achievement

Winners

See also

References

External links