Pulitzer Prize for History
The Pulitzer Prize for History, administered by Columbia University, is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It has been presented since 1917 for a distinguished book about the history of the United States. Thus it is one of the original Pulitzers, for the program was inaugurated in 1917 with seven prizes, four of which were awarded that year. The Pulitzer Prize program has also recognized some historical work with its Biography prize, from 1917, and its General Non-Fiction prize, from 1962.
Finalists have been announced from 1980, ordinarily two others beside the winner.
Winners
In its first 97 years to 2013, the History Pulitzer was awarded 95 times. Two prizes were given in 1989; none in 1919, 1984, and 1994. Four people have won two each, Margaret Leech, Bernard Bailyn, Paul Horgan and Alan Taylor.- 1917: With Americans of Past and Present Days by Jean Jules Jusserand
- 1918: ' by James Ford Rhodes
- 1919:''' no award given
1920s
- 1920: The War with Mexico by Justin H. Smith
- 1921: The Victory at Sea by William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick
- 1922: The Founding of New England by James Truslow Adams
- 1923: The Supreme Court in United States History by Charles Warren
- 1924: ' by Charles Howard McIlwain
- 1925: History of the American Frontier by Frederic L. Paxson
- 1926: A History of the United States by Edward Channing
- 1927: Pinckney's Treaty by Samuel Flagg Bemis
- 1928: Main Currents in American Thought by Vernon Louis Parrington
- 1929:' The Organization and Administration of the Union Army, 1861-1865'' by Fred Albert Shannon
1930s
- 1930: The War of Independence by Claude H. Van Tyne
- 1931: The Coming of the War, 1914 by Bernadotte E. Schmitt
- 1932: My Experiences in the World War by John J. Pershing
- 1933: The Significance of Sections in American History by Frederick J. Turner
- 1934: The People's Choice by Herbert Agar
- 1935: The Colonial Period of American History by Charles McLean Andrews
- 1936: A Constitutional History of the United States by Andrew C. McLaughlin
- 1937: The Flowering of New England, 1815-1865 by Van Wyck Brooks
- 1938: The Road to Reunion, 1865-1900 by Paul Herman Buck
- 1939: A History of American Magazines by Frank Luther Mott
1940s
- 1940: ' by Carl Sandburg
- 1941: The Atlantic Migration, 1607-1860 by Marcus Lee Hansen
- 1942: Reveille in Washington, 1860-1865 by Margaret Leech
- 1943: Paul Revere and the World He Lived In by Esther Forbes
- 1944: The Growth of American Thought by Merle Curti
- 1945: Unfinished Business by Stephen Bonsal
- 1946: The Age of Jackson by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
- 1947: Scientists Against Time by James Phinney Baxter III
- 1948: Across the Wide Missouri by Bernard DeVoto
- 1949:' The Disruption of American Democracy'' by Roy Franklin Nichols
1950s
- 1950: Art and Life in America by Oliver W. Larkin
- 1951: The Old Northwest, Pioneer Period 1815-1840 by R. Carlyle Buley
- 1952: The Uprooted by Oscar Handlin
- 1953: The Era of Good Feelings by George Dangerfield
- 1954: A Stillness at Appomattox by Bruce Catton
- 1955: ' by Paul Horgan
- 1956: The Age of Reform by Richard Hofstadter
- 1957: Russia Leaves the War: Soviet-American Relations, 1917–1920 by George F. Kennan
- 1958: Banks and Politics in America by Bray Hammond
- 1959: ' by Leonard D. White and Jean Schneider
1960s
- 1960: In the Days of McKinley by Margaret Leech
- 1961: ' by Herbert Feis
- 1962: ' by Lawrence H. Gipson
- 1963: Washington, Village and Capital, 1800-1878 by Constance McLaughlin Green
- 1964: ' by Sumner Chilton Powell
- 1965: The Greenback Era by Irwin Unger
- 1966: The Life of the Mind in America by Perry Miller
- 1967: ' by William H. Goetzmann
- 1968: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution by Bernard Bailyn
- 1969: Origins of the Fifth Amendment by Leonard W. Levy
1970s
- 1970: ' by Dean Acheson
- 1971: ' by James MacGregor Burns
- 1972: Neither Black nor White by Carl N. Degler
- 1973: ' by Michael Kammen
- 1974: ' by Daniel J. Boorstin
- 1975: Jefferson and His Time by Dumas Malone
- 1976: Lamy of Santa Fe by Paul Horgan
- 1977: The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861 by David M. Potter
- 1978: ' by Alfred D. Chandler, Jr.
- 1979: ' by Don E. Fehrenbacher
1980s
- 1980: Been in the Storm So Long by Leon F. Litwack
- * The Plains Across by John B. Unruh
- * The Urban Crucible by Gary B. Nash
- 1981: ' by Lawrence A. Cremin
- * A Search for Power: The 'Weaker Sex' in Seventeenth Century New England by Lyle Koehler
- * Over Here: The First World War and American Society by David M. Kennedy
- 1982: Mary Chesnut's Civil War by C. Vann Woodward
- * Power and Culture: The Japanese-American War, 1941-1945 by Akira Iriye
- * White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American & South African History by George M. Fredrickson
- 1983: The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790 by Rhys L. Isaac
- * Southern Honor: Ethics & Behavior in the Old South by Bertram Wyatt-Brown
- * The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 by Robert Middlekauff
- 1984: no award given
- 1985: Prophets of Regulation by Thomas K. McCraw
- * The Crucible of Race by Joel Williamson
- * The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians by Francis Paul Prucha
- 1986: ' by Walter A. McDougall
- * Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America by Kerby A. Miller
- * Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work and the Family from Slavery to the Present by Jacqueline Jones
- * Novus Ordo Seclorum: the Intellectual Origins of the Constitution by Forrest McDonald
- 1987: ' by Bernard Bailyn
- * Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference by David Garrow
- * Eisenhower: At War, 1943-1945 by David Eisenhower
- 1988: The Launching of Modern American Science, 1846-1876 by Robert V. Bruce
- * The Care of Strangers: The Rise of America's Hospital System by Charles E. Rosenberg
- * The Fall of the House of Labor by David Montgomery
- 1989: Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James M. McPherson
- 1989: ' by Taylor Branch
- * A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam by Neil Sheehan
- * Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 by Eric Foner
1990s
- 1990: ' by Stanley Karnow
- * American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm 1870-1970 by Thomas P. Hughes
- * The Image of the Black in Western Art, Volume IV: From the American Revolution to World War I by Hugh Honour
- 1991: A Midwife's Tale by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
- * America in 1857: A Nation on the Brink by Kenneth M. Stampp
- * Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939 by Lizabeth Cohen
- * The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy by Hugh David Graham
- 1992: ' by Mark E. Neely, Jr.
- * A Very Thin Line: The Iran-Contra Affairs by Theodore Draper
- * Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West by William Cronon
- * Profits in the Wilderness: Entrepreneurship and the Founding of New England Towns in the Seventeenth Century by John Frederick Martin
- * The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 by Richard White
- 1993: The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon S. Wood
- * ' by Garry Wills
- * The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction by Edward L. Ayers
- 1994: no award given
- * Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK by Gerald Posner
- * Crime and Punishment in American History by Lawrence M. Friedman
- * William Faulkner and Southern History by Joel Williamson
- 1995: ' by Doris Kearns Goodwin
- * Lincoln in American Memory by Merrill D. Peterson
- * Stories of Scottsboro by James Goodman
- 1996: ' by Alan Taylor
- * Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb by Richard Rhodes
- * The Sacred Fire of Liberty: James Madison and the Founding of the Federal Republic by Lance Banning
- 1997: ' by Jack N. Rakove
- * Founding Mothers and Fathers by Mary Beth Norton
- * The Battle for Christmas by Stephen Nissenbaum
- 1998: Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion by Edward J. Larson
- * ' by J. Anthony Lukas
- * Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History by Rogers Smith
- 1999: ' by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace
- * In a Barren Land: American Indian Dispossession and Survival by Paula Mitchell Marks
- * This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age by William E. Burrows
2000s
- 2000: ' by David M. Kennedy
- * The Cousins' Wars: Religion, Politics and the Triumph of Anglo-America by Kevin Phillips
- * Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier by James H. Merrell
- 2001: ' by Joseph J. Ellis
- * The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States by Alexander Keyssar
- * Way Out There in the Blue by Frances FitzGerald
- 2002: ' by Louis Menand
- * Deep Souths: Delta, Piedmont, and the Sea Island Society in the Age of Segregation by J. William Harris
- * Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America by Daniel K. Richter
- 2003: ' by Rick Atkinson
- * At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America by Philip Dray
- * Rereading Sex: Battles Over Sexual Knowledge and Suppression in Nineteenth Century America by Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz
- 2004: A Nation Under Our Feet by Steven Hahn
- * ' by Daniel Okrent
- * They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967 by David Maraniss
- 2005: Washington's Crossing by David Hackett Fischer
- * Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age by Kevin Boyle
- * Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810-1860, volumes 1 & 2 by Michael O'Brien
- 2006: ' by David Oshinsky
- * New York Burning by Jill Lepore
- * The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln by Sean Wilentz
- 2007: The Race Beat by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff
- * Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick
- * Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa, 1787-2005 by James T. Campbell
- 2008: ' by Daniel Walker Howe
- * ' by David Halberstam
- * Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power by Robert Dallek
- 2009: by Annette Gordon-Reed
- * The Liberal Hour: Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960s by G. Calvin Mackenzie and Robert Weisbrot
- * This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust
2010s
- 2010: Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed
- * Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 by Gordon S. Wood
- * Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin
- 2011: The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery by Eric Foner
- * Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South by Stephanie McCurry
- * Eden on the Charles: The Making of Boston by Michael J. Rawson
- 2012: ' by Manning Marable
- * Empires, Nations & Families: A History of the North American West, 1800-1860 by Anne F. Hyde
- * The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama Bin Laden by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan
- * Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America by Richard White
- 2013: Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam by Fredrik Logevall
- * The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America: The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600-1675 by Bernard Bailyn
- * Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History by John Fabian Witt
- 2014: The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832 by Alan Taylor
- * A Dreadful Deceit: The Myth of Race from the Colonial Era to Obama's America by Jacqueline Jones
- * Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident and the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser
- 2015: Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People by Elizabeth A. Fenn
- * Empire of Cotton: A Global History by Sven Beckert
- * An Empire on the Edge: How Britain Came to Fight America by Nick Bunker
- 2016: Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America by T. J. Stiles
- * Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War by Brian Matthew Jordan
- * Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor by James M. Scott
- * The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency by Annie Jacobsen
- 2017: Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy by Heather Ann Thompson
- * Brothers at Arms: American Independence and the Men of France and Spain Who Saved It by Larrie D. Ferreiro
- * New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America by Wendy Warren
- 2018: The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea by Jack E. Davis
- * Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics by Kim Phillips-Fein
- * Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots against Hollywood and America by Steven J. Ross
- 2019: ' by David W. Blight
- * American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic by Victoria Johnson
- * Civilizing Torture: An American Tradition by W. Fitzhugh Brundage
2020s
- 2020: Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America by W. Caleb McDaniel
- *Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
- *The End of the Myth: From the Border Wall in the Mind of America by Greg Grandin
Repeat winners
- Margaret Leech, 1942 for Reveille in Washington, 1860–1865 and 1960 for In the Days of McKinley
- Bernard Bailyn, 1968 for The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution and 1987 for Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution
- Paul Horgan, 1955 for Great River: The Rio Grande in North American History and 1976 for Lamy of Santa Fe
- Alan Taylor, 1996 for William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic and 2014 for The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832
- Don E. Fehrenbacher completed The Impending Crisis by David Potter, for which Potter posthumously won the 1977 prize, and won the 1979 prize himself for The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics.