2016 Organization of American Historians Book Awards
Every year, the Organization of American Historians awards prizes for the best books in United States history for that year within different history disciplines. These books are evaluated by extremely qualified historians and they have done a fantastic job finding 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.
Mark G. Hanna, Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire, 1570–1740 (2017, University of North Carolina Press)
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Joshua L. Reid, The Sea Is My Country: The Maritime World of the Makahs (Yale University Press).
Andrew J. Torget, Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800–1850 (University of North Carolina Press).
Merle Curti Award
The Curti Award is given to the best new books in the fields of American social history and intellectual history.
SOCIAL HISTORY Julie M. Weise, Corazón de Dixie: Mexicanos in the U.S. South since 1910 (University of North Carolina Press)
INTELLECTUAL HISTORY Daniel Immerwahr, Thinking Small: The United States and the Lure of Community Development (Harvard University Press)
Richard W. Leopold Prize
The Leopold Prize is unique because it recognizes the contributions of U.S. government and federal contract historians. The award is given to the author or editor of the best book on foreign policy, military affairs, historical activities of the federal government, documentary histories, or biography.
Jacqueline E. Whitt, " Bringing God to Men: American Military Chaplains and the Vietnam War (University of North Carolina Press)
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.
Martha Hodes, Mourning Lincoln (Yale University Press).
HONORABLE MENTION Gregory P. Downs, After Appomattox: Military Occupation and the Ends of War (Harvard University Press).
James A. Rawley Prize
The Rawley Prize recognizes the best new book addressing the history of race relations in the United States.
Margaret Ellen Newell, Brethren By Nature: New England Indians, Colonists, and the Origins of American Slavery (Cornell University Press)
Ellis W. Hawley Prize
for the best book-length historical study of the political economy, politics, or institutions of the United States, in its domestic or international affairs, from the Civil War to the present
Gary Gerstle, Liberty and Coercion: The Paradox of American Government from the Founding to the Present (Princeton University Press)
Liberty Legacy Foundation Award
for the best book by a historian on the civil rights struggle from the beginnings of the nation to the present
Tanisha C. Ford, Liberated Threads: Black Women, Style, and the Global Politics of Soul (University of North Carolina Press)
Lawrence W. Levine Award
for the author of the best book in American cultural history
Benjamin Looker, A Nation of Neighborhoods: Imagining Cities, Communities, and Democracy in Postwar America (University of Chicago Press).
David Montgomery Award
for the best book on a topic in American labor and working-class history, with co-sponsorship by the Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA)
Elizabeth Fones-Wolf and Ken Fones-Wolf, Struggle for the Soul of the Postwar South: White Evangelical Protestants and Operation Dixie (University of Illinois Press)
HONORABLE MENTION: Lou Martin, Smokestacks in the Hills: Rural-Industrial Workers in West Virginia (University of Illinois Press).
Mary Jurich Nickliss Prize in U.S. Women’s and/or Gender History
for the most original book in U.S. women’s and/or gender history
Cassandra Alexis Good, Founding Friendships: Friendships between Men and Women in the Early American Republic (Oxford University Press).