Bancroft Prize

Given by Columbia University in the City of New York

185 Works 49,362 Books 619 Reviews 4.0

The Bancroft Prizes are awarded annually by Columbia University in the City of New York. Under the terms of the will of the late Fredric Bancroft, provision is made for two annual prizes of equal show more rank to be awarded to the authors of distinguished works in either or both of the following categories: American History (including biography) and Diplomacy. The word "American" is interpreted to include all the Americas, North, Central, and South; however, the award is confined to works originally written in English or of which there is a published translation in English. Volumes of papers, letters, and speeches of famous Americans, unless edited by the author, are not eligible. Autobiography comes within the terms of the prize, but books reporting on recent personal experiences of Americans, within a limited area both in time and geographically, are not considered eligible. show less

Categories:: All, No Category (185)
Years:: All, 2024 (2), 2023 (3), 2022 (2), 2021 (2), 2020 (2), 2019 (2), 2018 (3), 2017 (3), 2016 (3), 2015 (2), 2014 (2), 2013 (2), 2012 (3), 2011 (3), 2010 (3), 2009 (3), 2008 (3), 2007 (2), 2006 (3), 2005 (3), 2004 (3), 2003 (2), 2002 (2), 2001; rescinded 2002 (1), 2001 (2), 2000 (3), 1999 (3), 1998 (3), 1997 (2), 1996 (2), 1995 (2), 1994 (3), 1993 (2), 1992 (2), 1991 (2), 1990 (2), 1989 (2), 1988 (2), 1987 (2), 1986 (2), 1985 (2), 1984 (2), 1983 (2), 1982 (2), 1981 (2), 1980 (3), 1979 (2), 1978 (2), 1977 (3), 1976 (2), 1975 (3), 1974 (3), 1973 (3), 1972 (3), 1971 (3), 1970 (3), 1969 (3), 1968 (3), 1967 (3), 1966 (2), 1965 (3), 1964 (2), 1963 (3), 1962 (3), 1961 (2), 1960 (2), 1959 (2), 1958 (1), 1957 (2), 1956 (2), 1955 (2), 1954 (2), 1953 (2), 1952 (2), 1951 (2), 1950 (2), 1949 (2), 1948 (3)
Announced:: March 7: 2024 Recent

Work	Year
Fire and Rain: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Wars in Southeast Asia by Carolyn Woods Eisenberg	2024
Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion by Elliott West	2024
G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage	2023
Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands by Kelly Lytle Hernandez	2023
The Sewing Girl's Tale: A Story of Crime and Consequences in Revolutionary America by John Wood Sweet	2023
Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance by Mia Bay	2022
The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics by Mae Ngai	2022
Katrina: A History, 1915–2015 by Andy Horowitz	2021
Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory by Claudio Saunt	2021
Saving America's Cities: Ed Logue and the Struggle to Renew Urban America in the Suburban Age by Lizabeth Cohen	2020
Illusions of Emancipation: The Pursuit of Freedom and Equality in the Twilight of Slavery by Joseph P. Reidy	2020
Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight	2019
Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip's War by Lisa Brooks	2019
Implacable Foes: War in the Pacific, 1944-1945 by Waldo Heinrichs	2018
God's Red Son: The Ghost Dance Religion and the Making of Modern America by Louis S. Warren	2018
Darkness Falls on the Land of Light: Experiencing Religious Awakenings in Eighteenth-Century New England by Douglas L. Winiarski	2018
The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America by Andrés Reséndez	2017
Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy by Heather Ann Thompson	2017
Remaking the American Patient: How Madison Avenue and Modern Medicine Turned Patients into Consumers by Nancy Tomes	2017
Madison’s Hand: Revising the Constitutional Convention by Mary Sarah Bilder	2016
The Saltwater Frontier: Indians and the Contest for the American Coast by Andrew Lipman	2016
Border Law: The First Seminole War and American Nationhood by Deborah A. Rosen	2016
Empire of Cotton: A Global History by Sven Beckert	2015
The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World by Greg Grandin	2015
Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time by Ira Katznelson	2014
A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling over the Memory of Sand Creek by Ari Kelman	2014
The Mortal Sea: Fishing the Atlantic in the Age of Sail by W. Jeffrey Bolster	2013
Lincoln's Code: The Laws of War in American History by John Fabian Witt	2013
Courage to Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Rights Movement by Tomiko Brown-Nagin	2012
Empires, Nations, and Families: A New History of the North American West, 1800-1860 by Anne F. Hyde	2012
Age of Fracture by Daniel T. Rodgers	2012
Ourselves Unborn: A History of the Fetus in Modern America by Sara Dubow	2011
The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery by Eric Foner	2011
Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580-1865 by Christopher Tomlins	2011
Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits by Linda Gordon	2010
Abigail Adams by Woody Holton	2010
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	2010
Killing for Coal: America's Deadliest Labor War by Thomas G. Andrews	2009
This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (Vintage Civil War Library) by Drew Gilpin Faust	2009
The Comanche Empire by Pekka Hämäläinen	2009
The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America by Allan M. Brandt	2008
The Populist Vision by Charles Postel	2008
Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America by Peter Silver	2008
Mockingbird Song: Ecological Landscapes of the South by Jack Temple Kirby	2007
William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism by Robert D. Richardson	2007
Dwelling Place: A Plantation Epic by Erskine Clarke	2006
The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times by Odd Arne Westad	2006
The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln by Sean Wilentz	2006
Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s Through the Civil War by Melvin Patrick Ely	2005
From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality by Michael J. Klarman	2005
Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810-1860 (2 Volume Set) by Michael O'Brien	2005
In the Presence of Mine Enemies: The Civil War in the Heart of America, 1859-1863 by Edward L. Ayers	2004
A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration by Steven Hahn	2004
Jonathan Edwards: A Life by George M. Marsden	2004
Captives & Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands by James F. Brooks	2003
The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670-1717 by Alan Gallay	2003
Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture by Michael A. Bellesiles	2001; rescinded 2002
Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory by David W. Blight	2002
In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th-Century America by Alice Kessler-Harris	2002
Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush by Susan Lee Johnson	2001
The Chief: the Life of William Randolph Hearst by David Nasaw	2001
Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II by John W. Dower	2000
The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction by Linda Gordon	2000
Into the American Woods: Negotiations on the Pennsylvania Frontier by James H. Merrell	2000
Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America by Ira Berlin	1999
The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity by Jill Lepore	1999
Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry by Philip D. Morgan	1999
Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt by Christine Leigh Heyrman	1998
The Clash: U.S.-Japanese Relations Throughout History by Walter LaFeber	1998
The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit by Thomas J. Sugrue	1998
Explicit and Authentic Acts: Amending the U.S. Constitution, 1776-1995 by David E. Kyvig	1997
Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 by James T. Patterson	1997
Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography by David S. Reynolds	1996
William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic by Alan Taylor	1996
The Refiner's Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644-1844 by John L. Brooke	1995
Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi by John Dittmer	1995
The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788-1800 by Stanley Elkins	1994
Tumult and Silence at Second Creek: An Inquiry into a Civil War Slave Conspiracy by Winthrop D. Jordan	1994
W. E. B. Du Bois, 1868-1919: Biography of a Race by David Levering Lewis	1994
Margaret Fuller: An American Romantic Life, Vol. 1: The Private Years by Charles Capper	1993
A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War by Melvyn P. Leffler	1993
Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West by William Cronon	1992
The Destructive War: William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans by Charles Royster	1992
Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939 by Lizabeth Cohen	1991
A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich	1991
Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow by Neil R. McMillen	1990
The Indians' New World: Catawbas and their Neighbors from European Contact through the Era of Removal by James H. Merrell	1990
Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 by Eric Foner	1989
Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America by Edmund S. Morgan	1989
Unfree Labor: American Slavery and Russian Serfdom by Peter Kolchin	1988
The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon by Michael S. Sherry	1988
A Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise: Merchants and Economic Development in Revolutionary Philadelphia by Thomas M. Doerflinger	1987
Roots of Violence in Black Philadelphia, 1860-1900 by Roger Lane	1987
Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States by Kenneth T. Jackson	1986
Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work and the Family, from Slavery to the Present by Jacqueline Jones	1986
The Free Women of Petersburg: Status and Culture in a Southern Town, 1784-1860 by Suzanne Lebsock	1985
The Life and Times of Cotton Mather by Kenneth Silverman	1985
Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901-1915 by Louis R. Harlan	1984
The Social Transformation of American Medicine: The Rise of a Sovereign Profession and the Making of a Vast Industry by Paul Starr	1984
Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England by John Putnam Demos	1983
Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist by Nick Salvatore	1983
A People in Revolution: The American Revolution and Political Society in New York 1760-1790 by Edward Countryman	1982
Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790-1865 by Mary P. Ryan	1982
Walter Lippmann and the American Century by Ronald Steel	1981
Alice James: A Biography by Jean Strouse	1981
Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932-1945 by Robert Dallek	1980
Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826-1860 by Thomas Dublin	1980
Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s by Donald Worster	1980
Allies of a Kind: The United States, Britain, and the War Against Japan, 1941-1945 by Christopher Thorne	1979
Rockdale: The Growth of an American Village in the Early Industrial Revolution by Anthony F. C. Wallace	1979
The Transformation of American Law, 1780-1860 by Morton J. Horwitz	1978
The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business by Alfred D. Chandler Jr.	1978
Class and Community: The Industrial Revolution in Lynn by Alan Dawley	1977
The Minutemen and Their World by Robert A. Gross	1977
Slave population and economy in Jamaica, 1807-1834 by B. W. Higman	1977
The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823 by David Brion Davis	1976
Edith Wharton: A Biography by R. W. B. Lewis	1976
Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery by Robert William Fogel	1975
Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made by Eugene D. Genovese	1975
Deterrence in American Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice by Alexander L. George	1975
Frederick Jackson Turner: Historian, Scholar, Teacher by Ray Allen Billington	1974
The Devil and John Foster Dulles by Townsend Hoopes	1974
The Other Bostonians: Poverty and Progress in the American Metropolis, 1880-1970 by Stephan Thernstrom	1974
Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam by Frances FitzGerald	1973
The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947 by John Lewis Gaddis	1973
Booker T. Washington: The Making of a Black Leader, 1856-1901 by Louis R. Harlan	1973
Neither Black Nor White: Slavery and Race Relations in Brazil and the United States by Carl N. Degler	1972
The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596-1728 by Robert Middlekauff	1972
The European Discovery of America, vol. 1, The Northern Voyages: A.D. 500–1600 by Samuel Eliot Morison	1972
The Image Empire: A History of Broadcasting in the United States, Vol. 3: From 1953 by Erik Barnouw	1971
Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger by David M. Kennedy	1971
Andrew Carnegie by Joseph Frazier Wall	1971
Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South by Dan T. Carter	1970
Charles Willson Peale by Charles Coleman Sellers	1970
The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 by Gordon S. Wood	1970
White over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812 by Winthrop D. Jordan	1969
Woodrow Wilson and World Politics: America's Response to War and Revolution by N. Gordon Levin Jr.	1969
The Brains Trust: A First-Hand Narrative of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Nomination and Election by R. G. Tugwell	1969
The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution by Bernard Bailyn	1968
A History of Negro Education in the South, From 1619 to the Present by Henry Allen Bullock	1968
From Puritan to Yankee: Character and the Social Order in Connecticut, 1690-1765 by Richard L. Bushman	1968
Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, 1816-1836 by William W. Freehling	1967
James K. Polk, Vol. 2: Continentalist, 1843-1846 by Charles Grier Sellers	1967
The Washington Community, 1800-1828 by James Sterling Young	1967
Between Two Empires: The Ordeal of the Philippines, 1929-1946 by Theodore Friend	1966
The Peacemakers: The Great Powers and American Independence by Richard Brandon Morris	1966
The United States and the Far Eastern Crisis of 1933-1938: From the Manchurian Incident Through the Initial Stage of the Undeclared Sino-Japanese War by Dorothy Borg	1965
Castlereagh and Adams: England and the United States, 1812-1823 by Bradford Perkins	1965
Portrait of a General: Sir Henry Clinton in the War of Independence by William Bradford Willcox	1965
Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940 by William E. Leuchtenburg	1964
Power, Freedom, and Diplomacy: The Foreign Policy of the United States of America by Paul Seabury	1964
John Adams by Page Smith	1963
The Might of Nations: World Politics in Our Time by John George Stoessinger	1963
Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision by Roberta Wohlstetter	1963
Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education 1876-1957 by Lawrence Cremin	1962
Charles Francis Adams, 1807-1886 by Martin B. Duberman	1962
To the Farewell Address: Ideas of Early American Foreign Policy by Felix Gilbert	1962
Wilson. Volume 3 / The struggle for neutrality, 1914-1915 by Arthur S. Link	1961
The Jefferson Image in the American Mind by Merrill D. Peterson	1961
In the Days of McKinley by Margaret Leech	1960
The Age of the Democratic Revolution, Vol. 1: The Challenge by R. R. Palmer	1960
The Americans: The Colonial Experience by Daniel Boorstin	1959
Henry Adams: The Middle Years by Ernest Samuels	1959
The Crisis of the Old Order, 1919-1933 by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.	1958
Russia Leaves the War: Soviet-American Relations, 1917-1920, Vol 1 by George F. Kennan	1957
Wilson: The New Freedom (Wilson, Vol 2) by Arthur S. Link	1957
Lincoln the President: Last Full Measure by J. G. Randall	1956
Henry Adams: A Biography by Elizabeth Stevenson	1956
Great River: The Rio Grande in North American History. Vol. 1, Indians and Spain. Vol. 2, Mexico and the United States. 2 vols. in one by Paul Horgan	1955
The Jacksonians: A Study in Administrative History, 1829-1861 by Leonard D. White	1955
The Undeclared War, 1940-1941 by William L. Langer	1954
Seedtime of the Republic by Clinton Rossiter	1954
The Era of Good Feelings by George Dangerfield	1953
Rendezvous with Destiny: A History of Modern American Reform by Eric F. Goldman	1953
Charles Evans Hughes by Merlo J. Pusey	1952
Origins of the New South, 1877-1913 by C. Vann Woodward	1952
Our More Perfect Union: From Eighteenth-Century Principles to Twentieth-Century Practice by Arthur N. Holcombe	1951
Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth by Henry Nash Smith	1951
Coronado: Knight of Pueblos and Plains by Herbert Eugene Bolton	1950
The Victorious Years, 1758-1760 by Lawrence Henry Gipson	1950
The Rising Sun in the Pacific: 1931-April 1942 by Samuel Eliot Morison	1949
Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History by Robert E. Sherwood	1949
Across the Wide Missouri by Bernard DeVoto	1948
Ordeal of the Union, Volume I: Fruits of Manifest Destiny, 1847-1852 by Allan Nevins	1948
Ordeal of the Union, Volume II: A House Dividing, 1852-1857 by Allan Nevins	1948

Top Members

Goulooze (91 works), hoolyaa (84), golson17g (80), eromsted (67), FGL33 (67), robmickey (65), walbat (65), kamintra (58), lostinthecosmos (57), haeesh (55), NLytle (55), rivkat (54), johnjmeyer (50), wfupianoman (50), Buchvogel (49), sallyandbob (49), pjmorton (48), Schmerguls (46), ThufirHawat (46), Division_Road (44), ecpclio (42), InternSGS (42), Polymath35 (42), ThomasEiusLiber (41), bookmountain (40), mjnemelka (40), octavianflavius (40), rshaynes (40), TLCrawford (39), alo1224 (38), gothamgrrl (38), jsweet7 (38), Brian1861 (37), cannon (37), cptodd (37), tracee (37), GregMiller (36), lizcovart (36), reecejones (36), shaunsayres (36), reelbigschmidt (35), RLNunezKPL (35), Hpriley3 (34), mffowler (34), Skitchly (34), stevewolfgang (34), ginger.hewitt (33), wcm (33), cwhig (32), dajohnsonii (32), igallupd (32), Steve_Walker (32), WilliamDorr (32), alrajul (31), bibliophiles (31), lahochstetler (31), Punch (31), TheWayneD (31), tyburntree (31), baptisthistoryprof (30), mattcrow (30), mdobe (30), nva4bikes (30), wihrwyo (30), unamend (29), circleb (28), ficekrichard47 (28), GZucker (28), historylibrary (28), rbailey (28), aimg (27), cuchulainn44 (27), jdenhartog (27), jztemple (27), KelMunger (27), LoriFlori (27), William_W (27), geoffmangum (26), Henry.Pole-Carew (26), JeffCoster (26), koheleth (26), markell (26), astahura (25), beebrain (25), jj67dwyer (25), jsmolenski (25), lfriedla (25), Palaeologus (25), pc1951 (25), shilohlogan (25), aabdelrahmanm (24), Dr.B00K (24), gregdehler (24), JRWinkler (24), JSchueler (24), KevinEldon (24), kyle_roberts (24), lmullen (24), meyerson (24), pitjrw (24), alibrarian (23), jfbeatty (23), Plantyfinn (23), SigmundFraud (23), TJSbooks (23), BBrands (22), bobreinhardt (22), DawnDrain (22), JFBallenger (22), jgallatin (22), lbrandt (22), LoriAnnK (22), Manas1000 (22), philipanderson (22), StanleyBalsky (22), Urbanologist (22), wendat (22), Yardape (22), AdrianJason (21), BD_Engel (21), Blythewood (21), bostonhistory (21), bwiegand (21), chknight (21), chuck_ralston (21), Davidmg (21), HistoryDetective (21), JBD1 (21), jeremyjsnow (21), jhurwitz (21), jrsiii50 (21), jwebre (21), kevlvn (21), rgbrooking (21), sharonfarrell (21), AsYouKnow_Bob (20), augustgarage (20), Bhinerfeld (20), Brazgo67 (20), deepthought42 (20), docjohnb (20), mjarsulic (20), pgleduc (20), Physiker (20), RobHoberman (20), suedavis (20), arcadiusxiv (19), cnewhall (19), karen-s (19), Kjuhase (19), MrsMuir (19), nfulks32 (19), nikobowie (19), SaintCeadda (19), stonerp (19), trputman (19), WHLibrary1963 (19), wrestleism (19)

Links

Sponsor — full list

Images

Gallery

Copy image to organization

Similar Awards and Honors

Pulitzer PrizeHistory

National Book Award

Cundill History Prize

Francis Parkman Prize

LA Times Book PrizeHistory

Helpers

New Awards and Honors

greeneyed_ives (7), timspalding (2), walbat (2), Nevov (1), ablachly (1)

Common Knowledge

Shortride (59), bergs47 (24), karenb (17), alibrarian (11), Bretzky1 (7), walbat (7), gilroy (6), Stbalbach (5), zmeischa (4), davidgn (3), surly (3), Carmen.et.Error (3), Christa_Josh (3), JRWinkler (2), kirkeet (2), Katya0133 (2), jburlinson (2), hoolyaa (2), KingRat (1), Nycticebus (1), alshacke (1), Muscogulus (1), jmarchetti (1), GalenWiley (1), stephmo (1), inge87 (1), norabelle414 (1), abbottthomas (1), Lemeritus (1), Maya47Bob46 (1), auntmarge64 (1), jacr (1), RobertMosher (1), bw42 (1), Schmerguls (1), JMK2020 (1), smithli (1), AbigailAdams26 (1)

Verdana Standard Verdana Small The Lorax System Standard System Large Georgia Large Text Atkinson

This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.