Awards / Book Awards and Prizes

Ellis W. Hawley Prize

Recognizing 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.


Overview

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: OCTOBER 1, 2023

The Ellis W. Hawley Prize is given annually by the Organization of American Historians to the author of 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. The prize honors the late Ellis W. Hawley, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Iowa, an outstanding historian of these subjects.


Requirements

Eligible works are book-length historical studies written in English. Each entry must be published during the period January 1, 2023 through December 31, 2023.

Submission Process

One copy of each entry, clearly labeled “2024 Ellis W. Hawley Prize Entry,” must be mailed directly to the committee members listed below. Each committee member must receive all submissions postmarked by October 1, 2023.

Bound page proofs may be used for books to be published after October 1, 2023 and before January 1, 2024. If a bound page proof is submitted, a bound copy of the book must be received by committee members and postmarked no later than January 7, 2024.

If a book carries a copyright date that is different from the publication date, but the actual publication date falls during the correct timeframe making it eligible, please include a letter of explanation from the publisher with each copy of the book sent to the committee members.

Please mail submissions to the committee members listed below: 

Kathryn Olmsted, Chair
History Department
University of California, Davis
2216 Social Sciences Building
1 Shields Avenue
Davis, CA 95616

Ernesto Chavez
University of Texas at El Paso
Department of History
Liberal Arts 320
500 W. University Ave.
El Paso, TX 79968

Samual Erman
2121 Woodside Road
Ann Arbor, MI 48104

Benjamin Hoy (NOTE: prefers digital copies of the submissions – [email protected])
724 Arts Building
9 Campus Drive
Saskatoon, SK S7N 5A5
Canada

Elizabeth Hinton 
Department of History
Yale University
Humanities Quadrangle
320 York Street
Room 219
New Haven, CT 06511

Past Winners

2022

Destin Jenkins, Stanford University, The Bonds of Inequality: Debt and the Making of the American City (University of Chicago Press)

2021

Lila Corwin Berman, Temple University, The American Jewish Philanthropic Complex: The History of a Multibillion-Dollar Institution(Princeton University Press)

2020

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Princeton University, Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Home Ownership (The University of North Carolina Press)

2019

Beth Lew-Williams, Princeton University, The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America (Harvard University Press)

2018

Richard White, Stanford University, The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865–1896 (Oxford University Press)

2017

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

2016

Gary Gerstle, University of Cambridge, Liberty and Coercion: The Paradox of American Government from the Founding to the Present(Princeton University Press)

2015

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

2014

Kate Brown, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters (Oxford University Press)

2013

Johnathan Levy, Princeton University, Freaks of Fortune: The Emerging World of Capitalism and Risk in America (Harvard University Press)

2012

Darren Dochuk, Purdue University, From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism (W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.)

2011

Nick Cullather, Indiana University, The Hungry World: America’s Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia (Harvard University Press)

Honorable Mention: Samuel Zipp, Brown University, Manhattan Projects: The Rise and Fall of Urban Renewal in Cold War New York(Oxford University Press)

2010

Margot Canaday, Princeton University, The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton University Press)

2009

Peggy Pascoe, University of Oregon, What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America (Oxford University Press)

2008

David M. P. Freund, University of Maryland, College Park, Colored Property: State Policy and White Racial Politics in Suburban America (The University of Chicago Press)

Wendy L. Wall, Colgate University, Inventing the “American Way”: The Politics of Consensus from the New Deal to the Civil Rights Movement (Oxford University Press)

2007

Marie Gottschalk, University of Pennsylvania, The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America (Cambridge University Press)

2006

Meg Jacobs, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Pocketbook Politics: Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America(Princeton University Press)

2005

Alison Isenberg, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, Downtown America: A History of the Place and the People Who Made It (The University of Chicago Press)

2004

Jennifer Klein, Yale University, For All These Rights: Business, Labor, and the Shaping of America’s Public-Private Welfare State(Princeton University Press)

2003

Steven W. Usselman, Georgia Institute of Technology, Regulating Railroad Innovation: Business, Technology, and Politics in America, 1840–1920 (Cambridge University Press)

2002

David W. Blight, Amherst College, Race and the Civil War in American Memory (Harvard University Press)

2001

Stephen Kantrowitz, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Ben Tillman and the Reconstruction of White America, (The University of North Carolina Press)

2000

Julian E. Zelizer, Taxing America: Wilbur Mills, Congress, and the State, 1945–1975 (Cambridge University Press)

1999

Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Harvard University Press)

1998

Walter LaFeber, The Clash: A History of U.S.-Japan Relations (W.W. Norton)

1997

Gareth Davies, From Opportunity to Entitlement: The Transformation and Decline of Great Society Liberalism (University Press of Kansas)