Pulitzer Prize for History

The Pulitzer Prize for History is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It has been presented since 1917 for a distinguished book about the history of the United States. Thus it is one of the original Pulitzers, for the program was inaugurated in 1917 with seven prizes, four of which were awarded that year. The Pulitzer Prize program has also recognized some historical work with its Biography prize, from 1917, and its General Non-Fiction prize, from 1952.

Finalists have been announced from 1980, ordinarily two others beside the winner.

Winners

In its first 97 years to 2013, the History Pulitzer was awarded 95 times. Two prizes were given in 1989; none in 1919, 1984, and 1994. Four people have won two each, Margaret Leech, Bernard Bailyn, Paul Horgan, and Alan Taylor.

1910s

• 1917: With Americans of Past and Present Days by Jean Jules Jusserand
• 1918: A History of the Civil War, 1861-1865 by James Ford Rhodes
• 1919: no award given

1920s

• 1920: The War with Mexico by Justin H. Smith
• 1921: The Victory at Sea by William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick
• 1922: The Founding of New England by James Truslow Adams
• 1923: The Supreme Court in United States History by Charles Warren
• 1924: The American Revolution: A Constitutional Interpretation by Charles Howard McIlwain
• 1925: History of the American Frontier by Frederic L. Paxson
• 1926: A History of the United States by Edward Channing
• 1927: Pinckney's Treaty by Samuel Flagg Bemis
• 1928: Main Currents in American Thought by Vernon Louis Parrington
• 1929: The Organization and Administration of the Union Army, 1861–1865 by Fred Albert Shannon

1930s

• 1930: The War of Independence by Claude H. Van Tyne
• 1931: The Coming of the War, 1914 by Bernadotte E. Schmitt
• 1932: My Experiences in the World War by John J. Pershing
• 1933: The Significance of Sections in American History by Frederick J. Turner
• 1934: The People's Choice by Herbert Agar
• 1935: The Colonial Period of American History by Charles McLean Andrews
• 1936: A Constitutional History of the United States by Andrew C. McLaughlin
• 1937: The Flowering of New England, 1815–1865 by Van Wyck Brooks
• 1938: The Road to Reunion, 1865–1900 by Paul Herman Buck
• 1939: A History of American Magazines by Frank Luther Mott

1940s

• 1940: Abraham Lincoln: The War Years by Carl Sandburg
• 1941: The Atlantic Migration, 1607–1860 by Marcus Lee Hansen
• 1942: Reveille in Washington, 1860–1865 by Margaret Leech
• 1943: Paul Revere and the World He Lived In by Esther Forbes
• 1944: The Growth of American Thought by Merle Curti
• 1945: Unfinished Business by Stephen Bonsal
• 1946: The Age of Jackson by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
• 1947: Scientists Against Time by James Phinney Baxter III
• 1948: Across the Wide Missouri by Bernard DeVoto
• 1949: The Disruption of American Democracy by Roy Franklin Nichols

1950s

• 1950: Art and Life in America by Oliver W. Larkin
• 1951: The Old Northwest, Pioneer Period 1815–1840 by R. Carlyle Buley
• 1952: The Uprooted by Oscar Handlin
• 1953: The Era of Good Feelings by George Dangerfield
• 1954: A Stillness at Appomattox by Bruce Catton
• 1955: Great River: The Rio Grande in North American History by Paul Horgan
• 1956: The Age of Reform by Richard Hofstadter
• 1957: Russia Leaves the War: Soviet-American Relations, 1917–1920 by George F. Kennan
• 1958: Banks and Politics in America by Bray Hammond
• 1959: The Republican Era: 1869–1901 by Leonard D. White and Jean Schneider

1960s

• 1960: In the Days of McKinley by Margaret Leech
• 1961: Between War and Peace: The Potsdam Conference by Herbert Feis
• 1962: The Triumphant Empire: Thunder-Clouds Gather in the West, 1763–1766 by Lawrence H. Gipson
• 1963: Washington, Village and Capital, 1800–1878 by Constance McLaughlin Green
• 1964: Puritan Village: The Formation of a New England Town by Sumner Chilton Powell
• 1965: The Greenback Era by Irwin Unger
• 1966: The Life of the Mind in America by Perry Miller
• 1967: Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West by William H. Goetzmann
• 1968: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution by Bernard Bailyn
• 1969: Origins of the Fifth Amendment by Leonard W. Levy

1970s

• 1970: Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department by Dean Acheson
• 1971: Roosevelt: The Soldier Of Freedom by James MacGregor Burns
• 1972: Neither Black nor White by Carl N. Degler
• 1973: People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization by Michael Kammen
• 1974: The Americans: The Democratic Experience by Daniel J. Boorstin
• 1975: Jefferson and His Time by Dumas Malone
• 1976: Lamy of Santa Fe by Paul Horgan
• 1977: The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861 by David M. Potter (Completed and edited by Don E. Fehrenbacher)
• 1978: The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business by Alfred D. Chandler, Jr.
• 1979: The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics by Don E. Fehrenbacher

1980s

Entries from this point on include the finalists listed after the winner for each year.

• 1980: Been in the Storm So Long by Leon F. Litwack
  • The Plains Across by John B. Unruh
  • The Urban Crucible by Gary B. Nash
• 1981: American Education: The National Experience, 1783–1876 by Lawrence A. Cremin
  • A Search for Power: The 'Weaker Sex' in Seventeenth Century New England by Lyle Koehler
  • Over Here: The First World War and American Society by David M. Kennedy
• 1982: Mary Chesnut's Civil War by C. Vann Woodward
  • Power and Culture: The Japanese-American War, 1941–1945 by Akira Iriye
  • White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American & South African History by George M. Fredrickson
• 1983: The Transformation of Virginia, 1740–1790 by Rhys L. Isaac
  • Southern Honor: Ethics & Behavior in the Old South by Bertram Wyatt-Brown
  • The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789 by Robert Middlekauff
• 1984: no award given
• 1985: Prophets of Regulation by Thomas K. McCraw
  • The Crucible of Race by Joel Williamson
  • The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians by Francis Paul Prucha
• 1986: ...the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age by Walter A. McDougall
  • Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America by Kerby A. Miller
  • Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work and the Family from Slavery to the Present by Jacqueline Jones
  • Novus Ordo Seclorum: the Intellectual Origins of the Constitution by Forrest McDonald
• 1987: Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution by Bernard Bailyn
  • Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference by David Garrow
  • Eisenhower: At War, 1943–1945 by David Eisenhower
• 1988: The Launching of Modern American Science, 1846–1876 by Robert V. Bruce
  • The Care of Strangers: The Rise of America's Hospital System by Charles E. Rosenberg
  • The Fall of the House of Labor by David Montgomery
• 1989: Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James M. McPherson
• 1989: Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954–1963 by Taylor Branch
  • A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam by Neil Sheehan
  • Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 by Eric Foner

1990s

• 1990: In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines by Stanley Karnow
  • American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm 1870–1970 by Thomas P. Hughes
  • The Image of the Black in Western Art, Volume IV: From the American Revolution to World War I by Hugh Honour
• 1991: A Midwife's Tale by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
  • America in 1857: A Nation on the Brink by Kenneth M. Stampp
  • Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939 by Lizabeth Cohen
  • The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy by Hugh David Graham
• 1992: The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties by Mark E. Neely, Jr.
  • A Very Thin Line: The Iran-Contra Affairs by Theodore Draper
  • Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West by William Cronon
  • Profits in the Wilderness: Entrepreneurship and the Founding of New England Towns in the Seventeenth Century by John Frederick Martin
  • The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 by Richard White
• 1993: The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon S. Wood
  • Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America by Garry Wills
  • The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction by Edward L. Ayers
• 1994: no award given
  • Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK by Gerald Posner
  • Crime and Punishment in American History by Lawrence M. Friedman
  • William Faulkner and Southern History by Joel Williamson
• 1995: No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II by Doris Kearns Goodwin
  • Lincoln in American Memory by Merrill D. Peterson
  • Stories of Scottsboro by James Goodman
• 1996: William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic by Alan Taylor
  • Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb by Richard Rhodes
  • The Sacred Fire of Liberty: James Madison and the Founding of the Federal Republic by Lance Banning
• 1997: Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution by Jack N. Rakove
  • Founding Mothers and Fathers by Mary Beth Norton
  • The Battle for Christmas by Stephen Nissenbaum
• 1998: Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion by Edward J. Larson
  • Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America by J. Anthony Lukas
  • Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History by Rogers Smith
• 1999: Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace
  • In a Barren Land: American Indian Dispossession and Survival by Paula Mitchell Marks
  • The New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age by William E. Burrows

2000s

• 2000: Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 by David M. Kennedy
  • The Cousins' Wars: Religion, Politics and the Triumph of Anglo-America by Kevin Phillips
  • Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier by James H. Merrell
• 2001: Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation by Joseph J. Ellis
  • The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States by Alexander Keyssar
  • Way Out There in the Blue by Frances FitzGerald
• 2002: The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America by Louis Menand
  • Deep Souths: Delta, Piedmont, and the Sea Island Society in the Age of Segregation by J. William Harris
  • Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America by Daniel K. Richter
• 2003: An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa 1942–1943 by Rick Atkinson
  • At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America by Philip Dray
  • Rereading Sex: Battles Over Sexual Knowledge and Suppression in Nineteenth Century America by Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz
• 2004: A Nation Under Our Feet by Steven Hahn
  • Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center by Daniel Okrent
  • They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967 by David Maraniss
• 2005: Washington's Crossing by David Hackett Fischer
  • Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age by Kevin Boyle
  • Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810-1860, volumes 1 & 2 by Michael O'Brien
• 2006: Polio: An American Story by David Oshinsky
  • New York Burning by Jill Lepore
  • The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln by Sean Wilentz
• 2007: The Race Beat by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff
  • Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick
  • Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa, 1787-2005 by James T. Campbell
• 2008: What Hath God Wrought: the Transformation of America, 1815–1848 by Daniel Walker Howe
  • The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War by David Halberstam
  • Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power by Robert Dallek
• 2009: The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed
  • The Liberal Hour: Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960s by G. Calvin Mackenzie and Robert Weisbrot
  • This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust

2010s

• 2010: Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed
  • Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 by Gordon S. Wood
  • Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin
• 2011: The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery by Eric Foner
  • Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South by Stephanie McCurry
  • Eden on the Charles: The Making of Boston by Michael J. Rawson
• 2012: Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable
  • Empires, Nations & Families: A History of the North American West, 1800-1860 by Anne F. Hyde
  • The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama Bin Laden by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan
  • Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America by Richard White
• 2013: Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam by Fredrik Logevall
  • The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America: The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600-1675 by Bernard Bailyn
  • Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History by John Fabian Witt
• 2014: The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832 by Alan Taylor
  • A Dreadful Deceit: The Myth of Race from the Colonial Era to Obama's America by Jacqueline Jones
  • Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident and the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser
• 2015: Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People by Elizabeth A. Fenn
  • Empire of Cotton: A Global History by Sven Beckert
  • An Empire on the Edge: How Britain Came to Fight America by Nick Bunker

Repeat winners

Four people have won the Pulitzer Prize for History twice.

• Margaret Leech, 1942 for Reveille in Washington, 1860–1865 and 1960 for In the Days of McKinley
• Bernard Bailyn, 1968 for The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution and 1987 for Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution
• Paul Horgan, 1955 for Great River: The Rio Grande in North American History and 1976 for Lamy of Santa Fe
• Alan Taylor, 1996 for William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic and 2014 for The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832
• Don E. Fehrenbacher completed The Impending Crisis by David Potter, for which Potter posthumously won the 1977 prize, and won the 1979 prize himself for The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics.