The Bancroft Prizes: Previous Awards


2023

G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century
by Beverly Gage
published by Viking (2022)

Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands
by Kelly Lytle Hernández
published by W.W. Norton & Company (2022)

The Sewing Girl's Tale: A Story of Crime and Consequences in Revolutionary America
by John Wood Sweet
published by Henry Holt and Company (2022)

 

2022

Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance
by Mia Bay
published by The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2021)

The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics
by Mae Ngai
published by W.W. Norton & Company (2021)

 

2021

Katrina: A History, 1915-2015
by Andy Horowitz
published by Harvard University Press (2020)

Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory
by Claudio Saunt
published by W.W. Norton & Company (2020)

A video of the 2021 online ceremony is available here

 

2020

Saving America's Cities: Ed Logue and the Struggle to Renew Urban America in the Suburban Age
by Lizabeth Cohen
published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2019)

Illusions of Emancipation: The Pursuit of Freedom and Equality in the Twilight of Slavery
by Joseph P. Reidy
published by The University of North Carolina Press (2019)

 

2019

Frederick Douglass, Prophet of Freedom
by David W. Blight
published by Simon and Schuster (2018)

Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip's War
by Lisa Brooks
published by Yale University Press (2018)

 

2018

Implacable Foes: War in the Pacific, 1944-1945
by Waldo Heinrichs and Marc Gallicchio
published by Oxford University Press (2017)

God's Red Son: The Ghost Dance Religion and the Making of Modern America
by Louis S. Warren
published by Basic Books (2017)

Darkness Falls on the Land of Light: Experiencing Religious Awakenings in Eighteenth-Century New England
by Douglas L. Winiarski
published by The University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture (2017)
 

2017

The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America
by Andrés Reséndez
published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (2016)

Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy
by Heather Ann Thompson
published by Pantheon Books (2016)

Remaking the American Patient: How Madison Avenue and Modern Medicine Turned Patients into Consumers
by Nancy Tomes
published by The University of North Carolina Press (2016)
 

2016

Madison’s Hand: Revising the Constitutional Convention
by Mary Sarah Bilder
published by Harvard University Press (2015)

The Saltwater Frontier: Indians and the Contest for the American Coast
by Andrew Lipman
published by Yale University Press (2015)

Border Law: The First Seminole War and American Nationhood
by Deborah A. Rosen
published by Harvard University Press (2015)

 

2015

Empire of Cotton: A Global History
by Sven Beckert
published by Alfred A. Knopf (2014)

The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World
by Greg Grandin
published by Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company (2014)

 

2014

Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time
by Ira Katznelson
published by Liveright Publishing Corporation/W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. (2013)

A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling  over the Memory of Sand Creek
by Ari Kelman
published by Harvard University Press (2013)
 

2013

The Mortal Sea: Fishing the Atlantic in the Age of Sail
by W. Jeffrey Bolster
published by Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2012)

Lincoln's Code: The Laws of War in American History
by John Fabian Witt
published by Free Press (2012)

2012

Courage to Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Rights Movement
by Tomiko Brown-Nagin
published by Oxford University Press (2011)

Empires, Nations, and Families: A History of the North American West, 1800–1860
by Anne F. Hyde
published by University of Nebraska Press (2011)

Age of Fracture
by Daniel T. Rodgers
published by The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2011)

2011

Ourselves Unborn: A History of the Fetus in Modern America
by Sara Dubow
Published by Oxford University Press (2010)

The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery
by Eric Foner
Published by W.W. Norton & Company (2010)

Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America
by Christopher Tomlins
Published by Cambridge University Press (2010)

2010

Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits
By Linda Gordon
Published by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Abigail Adams
By Woody Holton
Published by Free Press

White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, and the Removal of Indigenous Children in the American West and Australia, 1880-1940
By Margaret D. Jacobs
Published by University of Nebraska Press (2009)

2009

Killing for Coal: America's Deadliest Labor War
By Thomas G. Andrews
Published by Harvard University Press

This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War
By Drew Gilpin Faust
Published by Alfred A. Knopf

The Comanche Empire
By Pekka Hämäläinen
Published by Yale University Press (2008)

2008

The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America
By Allan M. Brandt
Published by Basic Books

The Populist Vision
By Charles Postel
Published by Oxford University Press

Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America
By Peter Silver
Published by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. (2007)

2007

Mockingbird Song: Ecological Landscapes of the South
By Jack Temple Kirby
Published by The University of North Carolina Press

William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism
By Robert D. Richardson
Published by Houghton Mifflin (2006)

2006

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
Published by Cambridge University Press

The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln
By Sean Wilentz
Published by W. W. Norton & Company (2005)

2005

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

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

Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810-1860 (2 volumes)
By Michael O’Brien
Published by University of North Carolina Press (2004)

2004

In the Presence of Mine Enemies: War in the Heart of America, 1859-1863
By Edward L. Ayers
Published by W.W. Norton & Co.

A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration
By Steven Hahn
Published by Belknap Press of Harvard University Press

Jonathan Edwards: A Life
By George M. Marsden
Published by Yale University Press

2003

Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands
By James F. Brooks
Published by the 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
Published by Yale University Press

2002

Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory
By David W. Blight
Published by 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
Published by Oxford University Press (2001)

2001

Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush
By Susan Lee Johnson
Published by W. W. Norton & Company

The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst
By David Nasaw
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company (2000)

2000

Into the American Woods: Negotiations on the Pennsylvania Frontier
By James H. Merrell
Published by W. W. Norton & Company

Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II
By John Dower
Published by W. W. Norton & Company and The New Press

The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction
By Linda Gordon
Published by Harvard University Press (1999)

1999

Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America
By Ira Berlin
Published by Harvard University Press

Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry
By Philip D. Morgan
Published by 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
Published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. (1998)

1998

Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt
By Christine Leigh Heyrman
Published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

The Clash: A History of U.S.-Japan Relations
By Walter LaFeber
Published by W. W. Norton & Company

The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit
By Thomas J. Sugrue
Published by Princeton University Press (1997)

1997

Explicit and Authentic Acts: Amending the U.S. Constitution, 1776-1995
By David E. Kyvig
Published by the University of Kansas Press

Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974
By James T. Patterson
Published by Oxford University Press (1996)

1996

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

Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography
By David S. Reynolds
Published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. (1995)

1995

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

Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi
By John Dittmer
Published by University of Illinois Press (1994)

1994

The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788-1800
By Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick
Published by Oxford University Press

Tumult and Silence at Second Creek: An Inquiry Into a Civil War Slave Conspiracy
By Winthrop D. Jordan
Published by Louisiana State University Press

W. E. B. Du Bois, 1868-1919: Biography of a Race
By David Levering Lewis
Published by Henry Holt and Company, Inc. (1993)

1993

Margaret Fuller: An American Romantic Life; Volume I: The Private Years
By Charles Capper
Published by Oxford University Press

A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War
By Melvyn P. Leffler
Published by Stanford University Press (1992)

1992

Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West
By William Cronon
Published by W. W. Norton & Company

The Destructive War: William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans
By Charles Royster
Published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. (1991)

1991

Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939
By Lizabeth Cohen
Published by Cambridge University Press

A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812
By Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
Published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. (1990)

1990

The Indians' New World: Catawbas and their Neighbors from European Contact through the Era of Removal
By James H. Merrell
Published by 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
Published by University of Illinois Press (1989)

1989

Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877
By Eric Foner
Published by Harper & Row

Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America
By Edmund S. Morgan
Published by W. W. Norton & Company (1988)

1988

The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon
By Michael S. Sherry
Published by Yale University Press

Unfree Labor: American Slavery and Russian Serfdom
By Peter Kolchin
Published by Harvard University Press (1987)

1987

A Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise: Merchants and Economic Development in Revolutionary Philadelphia
By Thomas Doerflinger
Published by 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
Published by Harvard University Press (1986)

1986

Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States
By Kenneth T. Jackson
Published by Oxford University Press

Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family, from Slavery to the Present
By Jacqueline Jones
Published by Basic Books, Inc. (1985)

1985

The Free Women of Petersburg: Status and Culture in a Southern Town, 1784-1860
By Suzanne Lebsock
Published by Norton & Co., Inc.

The Life and Times of Cotton Mather
By Kenneth Silverman
Published by Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. (1984)

1984

Booker T. Washington: The Wizard Of Tuskegee, 1901-1915
By Louis R. Harlan
Published by 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
Published by Basic Books, Inc. (1983)

1983

Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England
By John Putnam Demos
Published by Oxford University Press

Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist
By Nick Salvatore
Published by University of Illinois Press (1982)

1982

A People in Revolution: The American Revolution and Political Society in New York, 1760-1790
By Edward Countryman
Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press

Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790-1865
By Mary P. Ryan
Published by Cambridge University Press (1981)

1981

Walter Lippmann and the American Century
By Ronald Steel
Published by Little, Brown and Company

Alice James: A Biography
By Jean Strouse
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company (1980)

1980

Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932-1945
By Robert Dallek
Published by Oxford University Press

Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826-1860
By Thomas Dublin
Published by Columbia University Press

Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s
By Donald Worster
Published by Oxford University Press (1979)

1979

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

Rockdale: The Growth of an American Village in the Early Industrial Revolution
By Anthony F. C. Wallace
Published by Alfred Knopf, Inc. (1978)

1978

The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business
By Alfred D. Chandler Jr.
Published by Harvard University Press

The Transformation of American Law, 1780-1860
By Morton J. Horwitz
Published by Harvard University Press (1977)

1977

Class and Community: The Industrial Revolution in Lynn
By Alan Dawley
Published by Harvard University Press

The Minutemen and Their World
By Robert A. Gross
Published by Hill and Wang

Slave Population and Economy in Jamaica, 1807-1834
By Barry W. Higman
Published by Cambridge University Press (1976)

1976

The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823
By David Brion Davis
Published by Cornell University Press

Edith Wharton: A Biography
By R. W. B. Lewis
Published by Harper & Row (1975)

1975

Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery and Time on the Cross: Evidence and Methods—A Supplement
By Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman
Published by Little, Brown and Company

Deterrence in American Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice
By Alexander L. George and Richard Smoke
Published by Columbia University Press

Roll, Jordan, Roll
By Eugene Genovese
Published by Pantheon Books, Inc. (1974)

1974

Frederick Jackson Turner: Historian, Scholar, Teacher
By Ray Allen Billington
Published by Oxford University Press

The Devil and John Foster Dulles
By Townsend Hoopes
Published by Atlantic, Little, Brown and Company

The Other Bostonians: Poverty and Progress in the American Metropolis, 1880-1970
By Stephan Thernstrom
Published by Harvard University Press (1973)

1973

Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam
By Frances FitzGerald
Published by Atlantic, Little, Brown and Company

The United States and the Origins of the Cold War
By John Lewis Gaddis
Published by Columbia University Press

Booker T. Washington
By Louis R. Harlan
Published by Oxford University Press (1972)

1972

Neither Black Nor White
By Carl N. Degler
Published by The Macmillan Company

The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596-1728
By Robert Middlekauff
Published by Oxford University Press

The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages
By Samuel Eliot Morison
Published by Oxford University Press, 1971.

1971

The Image Empire: A History of Broadcasting in the United States, Volume III—From 1953
By Erik Barnouw
Published by Oxford University Press

Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger
By David M. Kennedy
Published by Yale University Press

Andrew Carnegie
By Joseph Frazier Wall
Published by Oxford University Press (1970)

1970

Charles Wilson Peale
By Charles Coleman Sellers
Published by Charles Scribner's Sons

The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787
By Gordon S. Wood
Published by 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
Published by Louisiana State University Press (1969)

1969

White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812
By Winthrop D. Jordan
Published by the 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.
Published by Oxford University Press

The Brains Trust
By Rexford Guy Tugwell
Published by The Viking Press (1968)

1968

A History of Negro Education in the South, from 1619 to the Present
By Henry Allen Bullock
Published by Harvard University Press

From Puritan to Yankee: Character and the Social Order in Connecticut, 1690-1765
By Richard L. Bushman
Published by Harvard University Press

The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
By Bernard Bailyn
Published by The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (1967)

1967

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

James K. Polk, Continentalist, 1843-1846, Volume II
By Charles Sellers
Published by Princeton University Press

The Washington Community, 1800-1828
By James Sterling Young
Published by Columbia University Press (1966)

1966

The Peacemakers: The Great Powers and American Independence
By Richard B. Morris
Published by Harper & Row

Between Two Empires: The Ordeal of the Philippines, 1929-1946
By Theodore W. Friend III
Published by Yale University Press (1965)

1965

Castlereagh and Adams; England and the United States, 1812-1823
By Bradford Perkins
Published by the University of California Press

Portrait of a General; Sir Henry Clinton in the War of Independence
By William B. Willcox
Published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

The United States and the Far Eastern Crisis of 1933-1938
By Dorothy Borg
Published by Harvard University Press (1964)

1964

Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal: 1932-1940
By William E. Leuchtenburg
Published by Harper & Row

The Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison
By John L. Thomas
Published by Little, Brown and Company

Power, Freedom, and Diplomacy: The Foreign Policy Of the United States of America
By Paul Seabury
Published by Random House (1963)

1963

John Adams
By Page Smith
Published by Doubleday & Company, Inc.

Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision
By Roberta Wohlstetter
Published by Stanford University Press

The Might of Nations: World Politics in Our Time
By John G. Stoessinger
Published by Random House (1962)

1962

The Transformation of the School
By Lawrence A. Cremin
Published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

To the Farewell Address; Ideas of Early American Foreign Policy
By Felix Gilbert
Published by Princeton University Press

Charles Francis Adams, 1807-1866
By Martin B. Duberman
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company (1961)

1961

The Jefferson Image in the American Mind
By Merrill D. Peterson
Published by Oxford University Press

Wilson: The Struggle for Neutrality, 1914-1915
By Arthur S. Link
Published by Princeton University Press (1960)

1960

The Age of the Democratic Revolution: Political History of Europe and America, 1760-1800
By R. R. Palmer
Published by Princeton University Press

In the Days of McKinley
By Margaret Leech
Published by Harper & Brothers (1959)

1959

Henry Adams: The Middle Years
By Ernest Samuels
Published by The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press

The Americans: The Colonial Experience
By Daniel J. Boorstin
Published by Random House (1958)

1958

The Crisis of the Old Order
By Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company

A History of American Magazines, Volume IV
By Frank Luther Mott
Published by The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (1957)

1957

Russia Leaves the War
By George F. Kennan
Published by Princeton University Press

Wilson: the New Freedom
By Arthur S. Link
Published by Princeton University Press (1956)

1956

Henry Adams
By Elizabeth Stevenson
Published by The Macmillan Company

Lincoln, the President: Last Full Measure
By J. G. Randall and Richard N. Current
Published by Dodd, Mead & Company (1955)

1955

Great River: The Rio Grande in North American History
By Paul Horgan
Published by Rinehart & Company, Inc.

The Jacksonians
By Leonard D. White
Published by The Macmillan Company (1954)

1954

Seedtime of the Republic
By Clinton Rossiter
Published by Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc.

The Undeclared War
By William L. Langer and S. Everett Gleason
Published by Harper & Brothers (1953)

1953

The Era of Good Feelings
By George Dangerfield
Published by Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc.

Rendezvous with Destiny
By Eric F. Goldman
Published by Alfred A. Knopf (1952)

1952

Charles Evans Hughes
By Merlo J. Pusey
Published by The Macmillan Company

Origins of the New South, 1877-1913
By C. Vann Woodward
Published by Louisiana State University Press (1951)

1951

Our More Perfect Union
By Arthur N. Holcombe
Published by Harvard University Press

Virgin Land
By Henry N. Smith
Published by Harvard University Press (1950)

1950

Volume VII, The Victorious Years, 1758-1760, of the series titled The Great War for the Empire
By Lawrence H. Gipson
Published by Alfred A. Knopf

Coronado
By Herbert E. Bolton
Published by Whittlesey House and the University of New Mexico Press (1949)

1949

Roosevelt and Hopkins
By Robert E. Sherwood
Published by Harper & Brothers

The Rising Sun in the Pacific
By Samuel E. Morison
Published by Little, Brown and Company (1948)

1948

Ordeal of the Union
By Allan Nevins
Published by Charles Scribner and Sons

Across the Wide Missouri
By Bernard DeVoto
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company (1947)