2015 Organization of American Historians Book Awards

A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life by Allyson Hobbs

Every year, the Organization of American Historians awards prizes for the best books in United States history for that year within different historical disciplines. These books are evaluated by extremely qualified historians and who identify some of the best new books in American history for 2016.

Frederick Jackson Turner Award

The Turner Award is given to an author for their first scholarly book on United States history. Allyson Hobbs, A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life (Harvard University Press)

HONORABLE MENTIONS: Jamie Cohen-Cole, The Open Mind: Cold War Politics and the Sciences of Human Nature (The University of Chicago Press)

Katherine C. Mooney, Race Horse Men: How Slavery and Freedom Were Made at the Racetrack (Harvard University Press)

Kyle G. Volk, Moral Minorities and the Making of American Democracy (Oxford University Press)

Merle Curti Social History Award

The Curti Award is given to the best new books in the fields of American social history.

Robert Love’s Warnings: Searching for Strangers in Colonial Boston by Cornelia Dayton and Sharon Salinger

Cornelia H. Dayton and Sharon V. Salinger, Robert Love’s Warnings: Searching for Strangers in Colonial Boston (University of Pennsylvania Press)

Merle Curti Intellectual History Award

The Curti Award is given to the best new books in the fields of American intellectual history.

Kyle G. Volk, Moral Minorities and the Making of American Democracy (Oxford University Press)

Ray Billington Prize

The Billington Prize is awarded for the best book on the history of native and/or settler peoples in frontier, border, and borderland zones of intercultural contact.

Jared Farmer, Trees in Paradise: A California History (W.W. Norton & Company)

Avery O. Craven Award

The Craven award is given to best book covering the Civil War, the Civil War years, or the Era of Reconstruction. Military history books are excluded from this prize.

Edward E. Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (Basic Books)

James A. Rawley Prize

The Rawley Prize recognizes the best new book addressing the history of race relations in the United States.

Daniel Berger, Captive Nation: Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era (The University of North Carolina Press)

Ellis W. Hawley Prize

The Hawley prize is awarded for the best book-length on the political economy, politics, or institutions of the United States, in its domestic or international affairs, from the Civil War to the present.

Alan McPherson, The Invaded: How Latin Americans and Their Allies Fought and Ended U.S. Occupations (Oxford University Press)

Liberty Legacy Foundation Award

The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward E. Baptist

The Liberty Legacy Award is specifically for the best book by a historian on the civil rights struggle.

N. D. B. Connolly, A World More Concrete: Real Estate and the Remaking of Jim Crow South Florida (The University of Chicago Press)

Lawrence W. Levine Award

The Levine Award focuses on the best book in American cultural history.

Allyson Hobbs, A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life (Harvard University Press)

David Montgomery Award

The Montgomery Award is given to the best book on a topic in American labor and working-class history. Chantal Norrgard, Seasons of Change: Labor, Treaty Rights, and Ojibwe Nationhood (The University of North Carolina Press)

HONORABLE MENTION: Brian Rouleau, With Sails Whitening Every Sea: Mariners and the Making of an American Maritime Empire (Cornell University Press)

Mary Jurich Nickliss Prize in U.S. Women’s and/or Gender History

The Nickless Prize is awarded to the most original book in during any period of American women’s or gender history.

Lisa Marguerite Tetrault, The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women’s Suffrage Movement, 1848–1898 (The University of North Carolina Press

Darlene Clark Hine Award Winners

Karsonya Wise Whitehead, Notes from a Colored Girl: The Civil War Pocket Diaries of Emilie Frances Davis (The University of South Carolina Press)

Willi Paul Adams Award

Every 2 years, this award is given to the author of the best book on American history published in a foreign language.

Jürgen Martschukat, Governing through the Family: Fatherhood and Families in American History since 1770 (Campus Verlag)

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