2014 Organization of American Historians Book Awards

Standing on Common Ground: The Making of a Sunbelt Borderland by Geraldo L. Cadava

Every year, the Organization of American Historians awards prizes for the best books in United States history for that year within different historical disciplines. These books are evaluated by extremely qualified historians and who identify some of the best new books in American history for 2016.

Frederick Jackson Turner Award

The Turner Award is given to an author for their first scholarly book on United States history. Geraldo L. Cadava, Standing on Common Ground: The Making of a Sunbelt Borderland (Harvard University Press)

HONORABLE MENTION: Dawn Bohulano Mabalon, Little Manila Is in the Heart: The Making of the Filipina/o American Community in Stockton, California (Duke University Press)

Darlene Clark Hine Award Winners

Estelle B. Freedman, Redefining Rape: Sexual Violence in the Era of Suffrage and Segregation (Harvard University Press)

Merle Curti Social History Award

The Curti Award is given to the best new books in the fields of American social history.

The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772–1832 by Alan Taylor

Alan Taylor, The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772–1832 (W.W. Norton & Company)

Merle Curti Intellectual History Award

The Curti Award is given to the best new books in the fields of American intellectual history. W. Caleb McDaniel, The Problem of Democracy in the Age of Slavery: Garrisonian Abolitionists and Transatlantic Reform (LSU Press)

Avery O. Craven Award

The Craven award is given to best book covering the Civil War, the Civil War years, or the Era of Reconstruction. Military history books are excluded from this prize.

Ari Kelman, A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling over the Memory of Sand Creek (Harvard University Press)

HONORABLE MENTION: Caroline E. Janney, Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation (University of North Carolina Press)

HONORABLE MENTION: Walter Johnson, River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press)

James A. Rawley Prize

The Rawley Prize recognizes the best new book addressing the history of race relations in the United States. Brenda E. Stevenson, The Contested Murder of Latasha Harlins: Justice, Gender, and the Origins of the LA Riots (Oxford University Press)

Ellis W. Hawley Prize

The Hawley prize is awarded for the best book-length on the political economy, politics, or institutions of the United States, in its domestic or international affairs, from the Civil War to the present.

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

Liberty Legacy Foundation Award

Defining the Struggle: National Organizing for Racial Justice, 1880–1915 by Susan D. Carle

The Liberty Legacy Award is specifically for the best book by a historian on the civil rights struggle.

Susan D. Carle, Defining the Struggle: National Organizing for Racial Justice, 1880–1915 (Oxford University Press)

Lawrence W. Levine Award

The Levine Award focuses on the best book in American cultural history. Shawn Michelle Smith, At the Edge of Sight: Photography and the Unseen (Duke University Press)

HONORABLE MENTION: Teresa Barnett, Sacred Relics: Pieces of the Past in Nineteenth-Century America (University of Chicago Press)

David Montgomery Award

The Montgomery Award is given to the best book on a topic in American labor and working-class history.

Stacey L. Smith, Freedom's Frontier: California and the Struggle over Unfree Labor, Emancipation, and Reconstruction (University of North Carolina Press)

Related DailyHistory.org Articles

• 2017 Organization of American Historians Book Awards
• What Were the Circumstances Surrounding the Death of "Stonewall" Jackson?
• Why Was the Battle of Antietam a Pivotal event in the American Civil War?
• Gilded Age/Progressive Era History Top Ten Booklist
• Was the Destruction Perpetrated by Lincoln, Grant, and Sherman Necessary to End the Civil War?
• The Best Historians and Books According to James McPherson