2016 Organization of American Historians Book Awards

Every year, the Organization of American Historians awards prizes for the best books in history for that year in various fields. These books are evaluated by extremely qualified historians and they have done a fantastic job finding some of the best new books in American history.

Frederick Jackson Turner Award

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

Mark G. Hanna, Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire, 1570–1740 (University of North Carolina Press)

HONORABLE MENTIONS Joshua L. Reid, The Sea Is My Country: The Maritime World of the Makahs (Yale University Press).

Andrew J. Torget, Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800–1850 (University of North Carolina Press).

Merle Curti Award

for the best books published in American social history and American intellectual history

SOCIAL HISTORY Julie M. Weise, Corazón de Dixie: Mexicanos in the U.S. South since 1910 (University of North Carolina Press)

INTELLECTUAL HISTORY Daniel Immerwahr, Thinking Small: TheUnited States and the Lure of Community Development (Harvard University Press)

Richard W. Leopold Prize

for the author or editor of the best book on foreign policy, military affairs, historical activities of the federal government, documentary histories, or biography written by a U.S. government historian or federal contract historian

Jacqueline E. Whitt, Bringing God to Men: American Military Chaplains and the Vietnam War (University of North Carolina Press)

Avery O. Craven Award

for the most original book on the coming of the Civil War, the Civil War years, or the Era of Reconstruction, with the exception of works of purely military history

Martha Hodes, Mourning Lincoln (Yale University Press).

HONORABLE MENTION Gregory P. Downs, After Appomattox: Military Occupation and the Ends of War (Harvard University Press).

James A. Rawley Prize

for the best book dealing with the history of race relations in the United States

Margaret Ellen Newell, Brethren By Nature: New England Indians, Colonists, and the Origins of American Slavery (Cornell University Press)

Ellis W. Hawley Prize

for 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

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

Liberty Legacy Foundation Award

for the best book by a historian on the civil rights struggle from the beginnings of the nation to the present

Tanisha C. Ford, Liberated Threads: Black Women, Style, and the Global Politics of Soul (University of North Carolina Press)

Lawrence W. Levine Award

for the author of the best book in American cultural history

Benjamin Looker, A Nation of Neighborhoods: Imagining Cities, Communities, and Democracy in Postwar America (University of Chicago Press).

David Montgomery Award

for the best book on a topic in American labor and working-class history, with co-sponsorship by the Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA)

Elizabeth Fones-Wolf and Ken Fones-Wolf, Struggle for the Soul of the Postwar South: White Evangelical Protestants and Operation Dixie (University of Illinois Press)

HONORABLE MENTION: Lou Martin, Smokestacks in the Hills: Rural-Industrial Workers in West Virginia (University of Illinois Press).

Mary Jurich Nickliss Prize in U.S. Women’s and/or Gender History

for the most original book in U.S. women’s and/or gender history

Cassandra Alexis Good, Founding Friendships: Friendships between Men and Women in the Early American Republic (Oxford University Press).