2017 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 acknowledge some of the best new books in American history for 2017.

Frederick Jackson Turner Award

The Turner Award is given to an author for their first scholarly book on United States history.

Blue Texas by Max Krochmal

Max Krochmal, Blue Texas: The Making of a Multiracial Democratic Coalition in the Civil Rights Era (University of North Carolina Press)

Merle Curti Intellectual History Award

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

Susanna L. Blumenthal, Law and the Modern Mind: Consciousness and Responsibility in American Legal Culture (Harvard University Press)

Merle Curti Social History Award

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

Wendy Warren, New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America (Liveright Publishing Corporation)

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.

Manisha Sinha, The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition (Yale University Press)

Ray Allen Billington Prize

The Strange Career of William Ellis by Karl Jacoby

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.

Karl Jacoby, The Strange Career of William Ellis: The Texas Slave Who Became a Mexican Millionaire (W. W. Norton & Company)

James A. Rawley Prize

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

Robert G. Parkinson, The Common Cause: Creating Race and Nation in the American Revolution (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.

Sam Lebovic, Free Speech and Unfree News: The Paradox of Press Freedom in America (Harvard University Press)

Liberty Legacy Foundation Award

The Liberty Legacy Award is specifically for the best book by a historian on the civil rights struggle. Russell Rickford, We Are an African People: Independent Education, Black Power, and the Radical Imagination (Oxford University Press)

HONORABLE MENTION: Elizabeth Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America (Harvard University Press).

Lawrence W. Levine Award

The Levine Award focuses on the best book in American cultural history. John W. Troutman, Kīkā Kila: How the Hawaiian Steel Guitar Changed the Sound of Modern Music (University of North Carolina Press)

David Montgomery Award

The Montgomery Award is given to the best book on a topic in American labor and working-class history. Ryan Patrick Murphy, Deregulating Desire: Flight Attendant Activism, Family Politics, and Workplace Justice (Temple 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. Katherine Turk, Equality on Trial: Gender and Rights in the Modern American Workplace (University of Pennsylvania Press)

Willi Paul Adams Award

Given to the author of the best book on American history published in a foreign language. Catherine Collomp, Université Paris-Diderot, Résister au nazisme: Le Jewish Labor Committee, New York, 1934–1945 (CNRS Editions) [Relief, Rescue and Resistance: The Jewish Labor Committee’s Anti-Nazi Operations: 1934–1945]

HONORABLE MENTION: Gilles Havard, Histoire des coureurs de bois. Amérique du Nord 1600 –1840 (Les Indes Savantes) [A History of Indian Traders. North America, 1600 –1840].

Darlene Clark Hine Award

for the author of the best book in African American women’s and gender history LaShawn D. Harris, Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers Runners: Black Women in New York City’s Underground Economy (University of Illinois Press)

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