Bancroft Prize
Nonfiction
1948 Across the Wide Missouri by Bernard Augustine De Voto1949 Rising Sun in the Pacific by Samuel Morison
History of the United States Naval Operations in World War II.
1950 Coronado, Knight of Pueblos and Plains by Herbert Eugene Bolton1951 Virgin Land by Henry Nash Smith
Examines the significance and impact of the nineteenth-century Westward movement on American literature. Bibliogs.
1952 Origins of the New South, 1877-1913, by Comer Vann Woodward
'This is a pioneer work. It is full of new detail and exceeding rich in fresh interpretation... In writing this book Vann Woodward clearly establishes himself as a leading figure among Southern historians.'-- Bell I. Wiley, New York Times Book Review
1953 The Era of Good Feelings by George Dangerfield
This is a prize-winning history of the years between the terms of Presidents Jefferson and Jackson.
1954 Undeclared War by Edward Keynes1955 Henry Adams by Elizabeth Stevenson
1959 Henry Adams by Ernest Samuels
Ernest Samuels won a Pulitzer Prize for this single-volume abridgement of his three-volume life of Henry Adams. Samuels is a respected Adams scholar, known for editing his letters, and he places his subject in historical and literary context, while pointing out the discrepancies between Adams's life and its portrayal in his own THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS.
1960 Age of the Democratic Revolution by R. R. Palmer1962 Transformation of the School by Lawrence A. Cremin
1963 Pearl Harbor; Warning and Decision. by Roberta Wohlstetter
This account of the Pearl Harbor attack denies that the lack of preparation resulted from military negligence or a political plot.
1967 Prelude to Civil War the Nullification Controversy by William W. Freehling
Historian William Freehling won the prestigious Bancroft Prize in History for this analysis of the Nullification Crisis which was a key event in the pre-history of the Civil War. Freehling deflty shows how the inter-related issues of slavery, states' rights, and economic interests boiled over when, in 1832, South Carolina passed a law "nullifying" federal law, specifically a tariff that Southerners thought was onerous and designed to undermine them. Freehling describes the high drama of the episode, which included the threat to secede, as well as the key personalities, including President Andrew Jackson, Vice-President John C. Calhoun (who resigned his office in support of nullification), and Senator Henry Clay. As his title states, Freehling sees these events as a set-up of things to come almost three decades later.
1968 From Puritan to Yankee by Richard L. Bushman1969 Woodrow Wilson and World Politics; America's Response to War and Revolution by Norman Gordon Levin
1970 The Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787 by Gordon S. Wood
By delving into the unique philosophical assumptions which distinguish the political attitudes of the colonists from classical, medieval ideas, the author illuminates the concepts of the Constitution.
1971 Image Empire by Erik Barnouw1972 Ordeal of the Union by Allan Nevins
1973 The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947 by John Lewis Gaddis
A study of American foreign policy and practices in the forties that focuses on the economic and political developments which forged the way for the Cold War.
1974 Other Bostonians by Stephan Thernstrom1975 Deterrence in American Foreign Policy:Theory and Practice by Richard Smoke, Alexander L. George
1976 Edith Wharton by Richard Warrington Baldwin Lewis
Lewis's masterly biography gives a complete picture of Wharton's privileged, highly unusual life and her contribution to American letters.
1977 Class and Community by Alan Dawley1978 Transformation of American Law, 1780-1860 by Morton Horwitz
1979 Allies of a Kind by Christopher G. Thorne
Explores the role Western colonial imperialism played in World War II.
1980 Dust Bowl by Donald Worster
Personal recollections recreate experiences of two Dust Bowl communities.
1981 Alice James by Jean Strouse1982 Entertaining Satan by John P. Demos
Focusing on witchcraft reports and trials outside of Salem and utilizing case histories and psychological analyses, this study evaluates the incidents and trials within the context of late-seventeenth-century New England.
1983 Eugene V. Debs by Nick Salvatore
Traces the life of the controversial American socialist and social reformer and assesses his role in American history.
1984 The Social Transformation of American Medicine by Paul Starr
Winner of the 1983 Pulitzer Prize and the Bancroft Prize in American History, this is a landmark history of how the entire American health care system of doctors, hospitals, health plans, and government programs has evolved over the last two centuries.
1985 The Free Women of Petersburg by Suzanne Lebsock
In a new book that has important implications for our vision of the female past, Suzanne Lebsock examines the question, Did the position of women in America deteriorate or improve in the first half of the nineteenth century? Winner of the Bancroft Prize for 1985.
1986 Crabgrass Frontier by Kenneth T. Jackson
Traces the development of American suburbs, suggests reasons for their growth, compares American residential patterns with those of Europe and Japan, and looks at future trends.
1987 A Vigorous Spirit Of Enterprise by Thomas M.A. Doerflinger1988 Unfree Labor by Peter Kolchin
1989 Reconstruction by Eric Foner
Winner of more than five prestigious awards, including the Los Angeles TimesBook Award. "This generation's defining interpretation of this most misunderstood passage in the nation's history."--Wall Street Journal
1990 Dark Journey by Neil R. McMillen
This is a history of Mississippi's black people, its majority people, and their struggles to achieve autonomy and full citizenship during the critical period of disfranchisement, segregation, and exclusion following 1890.
1991 A Midwife's Tale by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
This absorbing and illuminating chronicle of the life of a midwife in 18th-century Maine won the Pulitzer Prize in 1990.
1992 Destructive War by Charles Royster
Explores the growing destructiveness of the Civil War, focusing on the careers of Stonewall Jackson and William Tecumseh Sherman.
1993 Margaret Fuller by Charles Capper
Transcendentalist, Romantic, feminist- Margaret Fuller was nothing less than the first woman in America to establish herself as a dominant figure in highbrow culture at large. If there was one man or woman whose connections among gender, intellectual culture, and the avant-garde, it was Margaret Fuller.
1994 W.E.B. Dubois by David Levering Lewis
A definitive biography of the African-American author and scholar describes Du Bois's formative years, the evolution of his philosophy, and his roles as a founder of the NAACP and architect of the American civil rights movement.
1995 Local People by John Dittmer
A well researched work that tells the story of the civil rights movement in Mississippi, beginning after World War II.
1996 Walt Whitman's America by David S. Reynolds
This comprehensive, original portrait of the life and work of one of America's greatest poets--set in the social, cultural, and political context of his time--considers the full range of writings by and about Whitman, including his early poems and stories, his conversations, letters, journals, newspaper writings, and day books. of photos.
1997 Grand Expectations by James T. Patterson
Beginning in 1945, America rocketed through a quarter-century of extraordinary economic growth, experiencing an amazing boom that soared to unimaginable heights in the 1960s. At one point, in the late 1940s, American workers produced 57 percent of the planet's steel, 62 percent of the oil, and 80 percent of the automobiles. The U.S. then had three-fourths of the world's gold supplies. English Prime Minister Edward Heath later said that the United States in the postwar era enjoyed "the greatest prosperity the world has ever known." It was a boom that produced a national euphoria, a buoyant time of grand expectations and an unprecedented faith in our government, in our leaders, and in the American dream--an optimistic spirit which would be shaken by events in the '60s and '70s, and particularly by the Vietnam War.
1998 The Clash by Walter Lafeber
A history of political relations between the United States and Japan from its opening to Commodore Perry in 1853 to the present day. LaFerber, a professor of history at Cornell University, maintains that, despite profound cultural differences that have led to repeated and sometimes formidable conflicts, the economic ties that bind the two nations are strong enough--and indispensable enough--to compel amicability.
1999 Name of War by Jill Lepore
A history of the largely forgotten 1675 Indian uprising in America, in which the Algonquian tribes massacred nearly half the white colonists of New England before they were put down (just as brutally) by British troops. Lepore, a history professor at Boston University, maintains that this was the most vicious war ever fought on American soil.
2000 The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction by Linda Gordon
Gordon tells the story of how a handful of Irish Orphans were kidnapped by white settlers when it was discovered that they were intended for Mexican families. A New York Times Notable Book for 2000.
2001 Roaring Camp by Susan Lee Johnson
A social history of the Gold Rush life that examines identity constructions and multiculturalism in one of this nation's most romanticized histories.