Pulitzer Prize: history

In his will, publisher Joseph Pulitzer provided funding to create the Pulitzer Prize. The prize for history is designed to recognize "a distinguished and appropriately documented book on the history of the United States." Such a prize has been awarded annually since 1917, with very few exceptions. There were two winners in 2022.

2024: No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston's Black Workers During the Civil War Era, by Jacqueline Jones

2023: Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power, by Jefferson Cowie

2022: Covered With Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America, by Nicole Eustace; and Cuba: An American History, by Ada Ferrer

2021: Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America, by Marcia Chatelain

2020: Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America, by W. Caleb McDaniel

2019: Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, by David W. Blight

2018: The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea, by Jack E. Davis

2017: Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy, by Heather Ann Thompson

2016: Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America, by T.J. Stiles

2015: Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People, by Elizabeth A. Fenn

2014: The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832, by Alan Taylor

2013: Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam, by Fredrik Logevall

2012: Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, by Manning Marable

2011: The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, by Eric Foner

2010: Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World, by Liaquat Ahamed

2009: The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, by Annette Gordon-Reed

2008: What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848, by Daniel Walker Howe

2007: The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation, by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff

2006: Polio: An American Story, by David M. Oshinsky

2005: Washington’s Crossing, by David Hackett Fischer

2004: A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration, by Steven Hahn

2003: An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, by Rick Atkinson

2002: The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America, by Louis Menand

2001: Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, by Joseph J. Ellis

2000: Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945, by David M. Kennedy

1999: Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace

1998: Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion, by Edward J. Larson

1997: Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution, by Jack N. Rakove

1996: William Cooper’s Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic, by Alan Taylor

1995: No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II, by Doris Kearns Goodwin

1993: The Radicalism of the American Revolution, by Gordon S. Wood

1992: The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties, by Mark E. Neely

1991: A Midwife’s Tale, by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich



1990: In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines, by Stanley Karnow



1989: Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, by James M. McPherson



1988: The Launching of Modern American Science 1846-1876, by Robert V. Bruce



1987: Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution, by Bernard Bailyn



1986: . . . The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age, by Walter A. McDougall



1985: Prophets of Regulation, by Thomas K. McCraw



1983: The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1799, by Rhys L. Isaac

1982: Mary Chestnut’s Civil War, by C. Vann Woodward



1981: American Education: The National Experience, 1783-1876, by Lawrence A. Cremin



1980: Been in the Storm So Long, by Leon E. Litwack

1979: The Dred Scott Case, by Don E. Fehrenbacher

1978: The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business, by  Alfred D. Chandler

1977: The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861, by David M. Potter

1976: Lamy of Santa Fe, by Paul Horgan

1975: Jefferson and His Time, Vols. I-V, by Dumas Malone

1974: The Americans: The Democratic Experience, by Daniel J. Boorstin

1973: People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization, by Michael Kammen

1972: Neither Black Nor White, by Carl N. Degler

1971: Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom, by James MacGregor Burns

1970: Present At The Creation: My Years In The State Department, by Dean Acheson

1969: Origins of the Fifth Amendment, by Leonard W. Levy

1968: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, by Bernard Bailyn

1967: Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West, by William H. Goetzmann

1966: The Life of the Mind in America: From the Revolution to the Civil War, by Perry Miller

1965: The Greenback Era: A Social and Political History of American Finance, 1865-1879, by Irwin Unger

1964: Puritan Village: The Formation of a New England Town, by Sumner Chilton Powell

1963: Washington, Village and Capital, 1800-1878, by Constance McLaughlin Green

1962: The Triumphant Empire: Thunder-Clouds Gather in the West, 1763-1766, by Lawrence H. Gipson

1961: Between War and Peace: The Potsdam Conference, by Herbert Feis

1960: In The Days of McKinley, by Margaret Leech

1959: The Republican Era, 1869-1901, by Leonard D. White

1958: Banks and Politics in America, by Bray Hammond

1957: Russia Leaves the War: Soviet-American Relations, 1917-1920, by George E. Kennan

1956: The Age of Reform, by Richard Hofstadter

1955: Great River: The Rio Grande in North American History, by Paul Horgan

1954: A Stillness at Appomattox, by Bruce Catton

1953: The Era of Good Feeling, by George Dangerfield

1952: The Uprooted, by Oscar Handlin

1951: The Old Northwest, Pioneer Period 1815-1840, by R. Carlyle Buley

1950: Art and Life in America, by Oliver W. Larkin

1949: The Disruption of American Democracy, by Roy Franklin Nichols

1948: Across the Wide Missouri, by Bernard Devoto

1947: Scientists Against Time, by James Phinney Baxter 3rd

1946: The Age of Jackson, by Arthur Meier Schlesinger

1945: Unfinished Business, by Stephen Bonsal

1944: The Growth of American Thought, by Merle Curti

1943: Paul Revere and the World He Lived In, by Esther Forbes

1942: Reveille in Washington, 1860-1865, by Margaret Leech

1941: The Atlantic Migration, 1607-1860, by Marcus Lee Hansen

1940: Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, by Carl Sandburg

1939: A History of American Magazines, by Frank Luther Mott

1938: The Road to Reunion, 1865-1900, by Paul Herman Buck

1937: The Flowering of New England 1815-1865, by Van Wyck Brooks

1936: A Constitutional History of the United States, by Andrew C. McLaughlin

1935: The Colonial Period of American History, by Charles McLean Andrews

1934: The People’s Choice, by Herbert Agar

1933: The Significance of Sections in American History, by Frederick J. Turner

1932: My Experiences in the World War, by John J. Pershing

1931: The Coming of the War 1914, by Bernadotte E. Schmitt

1930: The Founding of the American Republic, Volume II: The War of Independence: American Phase, by Claude H. Van Tyne

1929: The Organization and Administration of the Union Army, 1861-1865, by Fred Albert Shannon

1928: Main Currents in American Thought, 2 vols., by Vernon Louis Parrington

1927: Pinckney’s Treaty, by Samuel Flagg

1926: A History of the United States, Vol. VI: The War for Southern Independence, by Edward Channing

1925: History of the American Frontier, by Frederic L. Paxson

1924: The American Revolution —A Constitutional Interpretation, by Charles Howard McIlwain

1923: The Supreme Court in United States History, by Charles Warren

1922: The Founding of New England, by James Truslow Adams

1921: The Victory at Sea, by William Sowden Sims in collaboration with Burton J. Hendrick

1920: The War with Mexico, by Justin H. Smith

1918: History of the Civil War, 1861-1865, by James Ford Rhodes

1917: With Americans of Past and Present Days, by J.J. Jusserand