Francis Parkman Prize Last updated May 18, 2025 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 The author need not be a citizen or resident of the United States, and the book need not be published in the United States.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 for Russia Leaves the War 1958 – Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. for The Crisis of the Old Order 1959 – Ernest Samuels for Henry Adams: The Middle Years 1960 – Matthew Josephson 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 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 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 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 for World of Our Fathers 1978 – David McCullough 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 Royster for A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and American Character, 1775-1783 1982 – William S. McFeely for Grant: A Biography 1983 – John R. Stilgoe for Common Landscape of America, 1580-1845 1984 – William Cronon 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 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 for Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 1990 – Geoffrey C. Ward 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 – David McCullough for Truman 1994 – David Levering Lewis for W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919 1995 – John Putnam Demos 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 for Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War 1998 – John M. Barry 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. 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 for The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America 2003 – James F. Brooks for Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands 2004 – Suzanne Lebsock for A Murder in Virginia: Southern Justice on Trial 2005 – Alan Trachtenberg 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 for Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830 2008 – Jean Edward Smith for FDR 2009 – Jared Farmer for On Zion's Mount: Mormons, Indians, and the American Landscape 2010 – Blake Bailey 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 [ 2] 2014 – Philip Shenon for A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination [ 3] 2015 – Danielle Allen for Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality [ 4] 2016 – Christine Leigh Heyrman for American Apostles: When Evangelicals Entered the World of Islam [ 4] 2017 – Joe Jackson for Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary [ 4] 2018 – Christina Snyder for Great Crossings: Indians, Settlers & Slaves in the Age of Jackson [ 4] 2019 – David W. Blight for Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom [ 5] 2020 – Charles King for Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century [ 6] 2021 – Christopher Tomlins for In the Matter of Nat Turner: A Speculative History [ 7] 2022 – Nicole Eustace for Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America . [ 8] 2023 – John Wood Sweet for The Sewing Girl’s Tale: A Story of Crime and Consequences in Revolutionary America . [ 9] 2024 – David Waldstreicher for The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: A Poet’s Journeys through American Slavery and Independence . [ 10] 2025 – Jon Grinspan for Wide Awake: The Forgotten Force That Elected Lincoln and Spurred the Civil War [ 11] 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. [ 12]
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