Mark Lynton History Prize

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The Mark Lynton History Prize is an annual award in the amount of $10,000 given to a book "of history, on any subject, that best combines intellectual or scholarly distinction with felicity of expression". [1] The prize is one of three awards given as part of the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize administered by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism [2] and by the Columbia University School of Journalism. [3]

Contents

The prize is named in honor of Mark Lynton, a refugee from Nazi Germany, Second World War officer, and automobile industry executive. In 1939 Lynton was a Jewish German-born student, studying history at Cambridge when he and other German nationals were rounded up and interned in detention camps in England and Canada as enemy aliens, suspected of being Nazi sympathizers. When Lynton was released he joined the British Army, became a tank commander, and was later promoted to Major in the occupying force, Army of the Rhine, where he helped interrogate high-ranking Nazi officers. Lynton memorialized his odyssey in his memoir, Accidental Journey: A Cambridge Internee's Memoir of World War II. [4] The prize was established by his wife, Marion, children, Lili and Michael, and grandchildren, Lucinda, Eloise Lynton and Maisie Lynton, to honor Lynton who was an avid reader of history. The Lynton family has underwritten the Lukas Prize Project since its inception in 1998.

Winners

YearAuthorTitleResultRef.
1999 Adam Hochschild King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa Winner
2000 John W. Dower Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II Winner
2001 Fred Anderson Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754–1766Winner
2002 Mark Roseman A Past in Hiding: Memory and Survival in Nazi GermanyWinner
2003 Robert W. Harms The Diligent: A Voyage Through the Worlds of Slave Trade Winner
2004 Rebecca Solnit River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West Winner
2005 Richard Steven Street Beasts of the Field: A Narrative History of California Farmworkers, 1769–1913Winner
2006 Megan Marshall The Peabody Sisters: Three Women who Ignited American RomanticismWinner
2007 James T. Campbell Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa, 1787–2005Winner
2008 Peter Silver Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early AmericaWinner
2009 Timothy Brook Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World Winner
2010 James Davidson The Greeks and Greek Love: A Bold New Exploration of the Ancient WorldWinner
2011 Isabel Wilkerson The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration Winner
2012 Sophia Rosenfeld Common Sense: A Political History Winner
2013 Robert Caro The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson Winner
2014 Jill Lepore Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane FranklinWinner
2015 Harold Holzer Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion Winner
2016 Nikolaus Wachsmann KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration CampsWinner
2017 Tyler Anbinder City of Dreams: The 400-Year Epic History of Immigrant New YorkWinner
2018 Stephen Kotkin Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941 Winner
2019 Jeffrey C. Stewart The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke Winner
2019 Andrew Delbanco The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America's Soul from the Revolution to the Civil WarWinner
2020 Kerri K. Greenidge Black Radical: The Life and Times of William Monroe TrotterWinner
2021 William G. Thomas III A Question Of Freedom: The Families Who Challenged Slavery from the Nation's Founding to the Civil WarWinner
2022 Jane Rogoyska Surviving Katyń: Stalin's Polish Massacre and the Search for TruthWinner [5]
Katie Booth The Invention of Miracles: Language, Power, and Alexander Graham Bell’s Quest to End DeafnessFinalist
2023 Deborah Cohen Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: The Reporters Who Took on a World at WarWinner [6]
Kelly Lytle Hernández Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire & Revolution in the BorderlandsFinalist
2024 Ned Blackhawk The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. HistoryWinner [7]
Gary J. Bass Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern AsiaFinalist

See also

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References

  1. "J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project". Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. Retrieved 16 March 2011.
  2. "J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project". Neiman Foundation. Retrieved 20 June 2017.
  3. "The J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project". Columbia Journalism School. Retrieved 20 June 2017.
  4. Lynton, Mark (1995). Accidental journey : a Cambridge internee's memoir of World War II (1. ed.). Woodstock [u.a.]: Overlook Press. pp.  276. ISBN   978-0879515775.
  5. Schaub, Michael (2022-03-23). "Winners of the 2022 Lukas Prizes Revealed". Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved 2022-03-23.
  6. "Winners and finalists of the 2023 J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project Awards announced". nieman.harvard.edu. March 20, 2023. Retrieved April 1, 2023.
  7. "Dashka Slater, Ned Blackhawk, Lorraine Boissoneault, Alice Driver Named Winners of the 2024 J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project Awards". journalism.columbia.edu. March 19, 2024. Retrieved April 24, 2024.