Honor roll:Pulitzer Prize for History
From AwardAnnals
Each of these books has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for History. They are ranked by honors received.
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- Pulitzer Prize for History authors
- History books
- History authors
- Nonfiction books
- Nonfiction authors
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Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America
- 1993 Pulitzer–Nonfiction winner
- 1992 NBCC–Criticism winner
- 1993 Pulitzer–History finalist
- 1992 NBA–Nonfiction finalist
- Score: 32.43
The power of words has rarely been given a more compelling demonstration than in the Gettysburg Address. Lincoln was asked to memorialize the gruesome battle. Instead, he gave the whole nation “a new birth of freedom” in the space of a mere 272 words. His entire life and previous training, and his deep political experience went into this, his revolutionary masterpiece.
By examining both the address and Lincoln in their historical moment and cultural frame, Wills breathes new life into words we thought we knew, and reveals much about a president so mythologized…
Parting the Waters: Volume 1 of America in the King Years, 1954-1963
- 1989 LATimes–Current Interest winner
- 1989 Pulitzer–History winner
- 1988 NBCC–Nonfiction winner
- Score: 30.39
Hailed as the most masterful story ever told of the American civil rights movement, Parting the Waters is destined to endure for generations. Moving from the fiery political baptism of Martin Luther King, Jr., to the corridors of Camelot where the Kennedy brothers weighed demands for justice against the deceptions of J. Edgar Hoover, here is a vivid tapestry of America, torn and finally transformed by a revolutionary struggle unequaled since the Civil War.
Taylor Branch provides an unsurpassed portrait of King’s rise to greatness and illuminates the…
Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age
- 2004 NBA–Nonfiction winner
- 2005 Pulitzer–History finalist
- 2004 NBCC–Nonfiction finalist
- Score: 22.54
In 1925, Detroit was a smoky swirl of jazz and speakeasies, assembly lines and fistfights. The advent of automobiles had brought workers from around the globe to compete for manufacturing jobs, and tensions often flared with the KKK in ascendance and violence rising. Ossian Sweet, a proud Negro doctor-grandson of a slave-had made the long climb from the ghetto to a home of his own in a previously all-white neighborhood. Yet just after his arrival, a mob gathered outside his house; suddenly, shots rang out: Sweet, or one of his defenders, had accidentally killed…
Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War
- 2000 LATimes–Current Interest winner
- 2001 Pulitzer–History finalist
- 2000 NBCC–Nonfiction finalist
- Score: 22.5
Way Out There in the Blue is a major work of history by the Pulitzer Prizewinning author of Fire in the Lake. Using the Star Wars missile defense program as a magnifying glass on his presidency, Frances FitzGerald gives us a wholly original portrait of Ronald Reagan, the most puzzling president of the last half of the twentieth century.
Reagan’s presidency and the man himself have always been difficult to fathom. His influence was enormous, and the few powerful ideas he espoused remain with us still—yet he seemed nothing more than a charming,…
Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery
Based on hitherto unexamined sources: interviews with ex-slaves, diaries and accounts by former slaveholders, this “rich and admirably written book” (Eugene Genovese, The New York Times Book Review) aims to show how, during the Civil War and after Emancipation, blacks and whites interacted in ways that dramatized not only their mutual dependency, but the ambiguities and tensions that had always been latent in “the peculiar institution.”
Roosevelt: Soldier of Freedom, 1940-1945
This award-winning companion volume to Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox concludes the first and most acclaimed complete biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Undoubtedly the most comprehensive study of one of America’s most acclaimed presidents, this classic biography is unparalleled in its depth, accuracy, and accomplishment.
What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America 1815-1848
Howe’s panoramic narrative portrays revolutionary improvements in transportation and communications that accelerated the extension of the American empire. Railroads, canals, newspapers, and the telegraph dramatically lowered travel times and spurred the spread of information. These innovations prompted the emergence of mass political parties and stimulated America’s economic development from an overwhelmingly rural country to a diversified economy. Howe weaves together political and military events with social, economic, and cultural history. He examines the rise of Andrew Jackson and his Democratic party, but contends that John Quincy Adams and other Whigs were the true prophets of America’s future. He reveals the power of religion to shape many aspects of American life during this period, including slavery and antislavery, women’s rights and other reform movements, politics, education, and literature. Howe’s story of American expansion culminates in the bitterly controversial but brilliantly executed war waged against Mexico to gain California and Texas for the United States.
Six months after the Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution was all but lost. A powerful British force had routed the Americans at New York, occupied three colonies, and advanced within sight of Philadelphia. George Washington lost ninety percent of his army and was driven across the Delaware River. Panic and despair spread through the states.
Yet, as David Hackett Fischer recounts in this riveting history, Washington—and many other Americans—refused to let the Revolution die. Even as the British and Germans spread their troops across New Jersey,…
The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America
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…
Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation
An illuminating study of the intertwined lives of the founders of the American republic—John Adams, Aaron Burr, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington.
During the 1790s, which Ellis calls the most decisive decade in our nation’s history, the greatest statesmen of their generation—and perhaps any—came together to define the new republic and direct its course for the coming centuries. Ellis focuses on six discrete moments that exemplify the most crucial issues facing the fragile new nation: Burr and…
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