Annal:2002 Pulitzer Prize for History
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Pulitzer Prize in the year 2002. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America
- 2002 Pulitzer–History winner
- 2001 LATimes–History finalist
- Score: 16.52
A riveting, original book about the creation of modern American thought.
The Metaphysical Club was an informal group that met in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1872, to talk about ideas. Its members included Oliver Well Holmes, Jr., future associate justice of the United States Supreme Court; William James, the father of modern American psychology; and Charles Sanders Peirce, logician, scientist, and the founder of semiotics. The Club was probably in existence for about nine months. No records were kept. The one thing we know that came out of it was an idea—an…
Deep Souths: Delta, Piedmont, and Sea Island Society in the Age of Segregation
- 2002 Pulitzer–History finalist
- Score: 6.52
Deep Souths tells the stories of three southern regions from Reconstruction to World War II: the Mississippi-Yazoo Delta, the eastern Piedmont of Georgia, and the Georgia Sea Islands and Atlantic coast. Though these regions initially shared the histories and populations we associate with the idea of a “Deep South”—all had economies based on slave plantation labor in 1860—their histories diverged sharply during the three generations after Reconstruction. Along the Georgia coast, thousands of former slaves became landowning peasant farmers and African Americans…
Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America
- 2002 Pulitzer–History finalist
- Score: 6.52
In the beginning, North America was Indian country. But only in the beginning. After the opening act of the great national drama, Native Americans yielded to the westward rush of European settlers. Or so the story usually goes. Yet, for three centuries after Columbus, Native people controlled most of eastern North America and profoundly shaped its destiny. In Facing East from Indian Country, Daniel K. Richter keeps Native people center-stage throughout the story of the origins of the United States. Viewed from Indian country, the sixteenth century was an era in…
