2018
The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea by Jack E. Davis
An important environmental history of the Gulf of Mexico that brings crucial attention to Earth’s 10th-largest body of water, one of the planet’s most diverse and productive marine ecosystems. |
2017
Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy by Heather Ann Thompson
For a narrative history that sets high standards for scholarly judgment and tenacity of inquiry in seeking the truth about the 1971 Attica prison riots. |
2016
Custer”s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America by T.J. Stiles
A rich and surprising new telling of the journey of the iconic American soldier whose death turns out not to have been the main point of his life. (Moved by the Board from the Biography category.) |
2015
Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People by Elizabeth A. Fenn
An engrossing, original narrative showing the Mandans, a Native American tribe in the Dakotas, as a people with a history. |
The Pulitzer Prize for History has been presented since 1917 for a distinguished book about the history of the United States.
(2018)
The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea
Jack E. Davis
(2017)
Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy
Heather Ann Thompson
(2016)
Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America
T. J. Stiles
(2015)
Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People
Elizabeth A. Fenn
(2014)
The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832
Alan Taylor
George Washington Book Prize (2014), L.A. Times Book Prize (2013), National Book Awards (2013), Pulitzer Prize (2014)
(2013)
Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam
Fredrik Logevall
(2012)
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention
Manning Marable
ALA Notable Books (2012), Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence (2012), Black Caucus of the American Library Association Literary_award (2012), L.A. Times Book Prize (2011), Lukas Prize Project (2012), National Book Awards (2011), National Book Critics Circle Award (2011), Pulitzer Prize (2012)
(2011)
The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery
Eric Foner
Bancroft Prize (2011), Pulitzer Prize (2011)
(2010)
Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World
Liaquat Ahamed
(2009)
The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family
Annette Gordon-Reed
ALA Notable Books (2009), George Washington Book Prize (2009), Lukas Prize Project (2009), National Book Awards (2008), National Book Critics Circle Award (2008), Pulitzer Prize (2009)
(2008)
What Hath God Wrought: the Transformation of America, 1815–1848
Daniel Walker Howe
National Book Critics Circle Award (2007), Pulitzer Prize (2008)
(2007)
The Race Beat
Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff
(2006)
Polio: An American Story
David Oshinsky
(2005)
Washington's Crossing
David Hackett Fischer
ALA Notable Books (2005), Ambassador Book Awards (2005), Massachusetts Book Award (MassBook) (2005), National Book Awards (2004), Pulitzer Prize (2005)
(2004)
A Nation Under Our Feet
Steven Hahn
(2003)
An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa 1942–1943
Rick Atkinson
(2002)
The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America
Louis Menand
(2001)
Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation
Joseph J. Ellis
L.A. Times Book Prize (2000), Pulitzer Prize (2001)
(2000)
Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945
David M. Kennedy
(1999)
Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898
Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace
(1998)
Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion
Edward J. Larson
(1997)
Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution
Jack N. Rakove
(1996)
William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic
Alan Taylor
(1995)
No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II
Doris Kearns Goodwin
(1994)
No award given
(1993)
The Radicalism of the American Revolution
Gordon S. Wood
(1992)
The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties
Mark E. Neely, Jr.
(1991)
A Midwife's Tale
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
(1990)
In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines
Stanley Karnow
(1989)
Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954–1963
Taylor Branch
(1989)
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era
James M. McPherson
(1988)
The Launching of Modern American Science, 1846–1876
Robert V. Bruce
(1987)
Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution
Bernard Bailyn
(1986)
...the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age
Walter A. McDougall
(1985)
Prophets of Regulation
Thomas K. McCraw
(1984)
No award given
(1983)
The Transformation of Virginia, 1740–1790
Rhys L. Isaac
(1982)
Mary Chesnut's Civil War
C. Vann Woodward
(1981)
American Education: The National Experience, 1783–1876
Lawrence A. Cremin
(1980)
Been in the Storm So Long
Leon F. Litwack
(1979)
The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics
Don E. Fehrenbacher
(1978)
The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business
Alfred D. Chandler, Jr.
(1977)
The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861
David M. Potter (Completed and edited Don E. Fehrenbacher)
(1976)
Lamy of Santa Fe
Paul Horgan
(1975)
Jefferson and His Time
Dumas Malone
(1974)
The Americans: The Democratic Experience
Daniel J. Boorstin
(1973)
People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization
Michael Kammen
(1972)
Neither Black nor White
Carl N. Degler
(1971)
Roosevelt: The Soldier Of Freedom
James MacGregor Burns
(1970)
Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department
Dean Acheson
(1969)
Origins of the Fifth Amendment
Leonard W. Levy
(1968)
The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
Bernard Bailyn
(1967)
Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West
William H. Goetzmann
(1966)
The Life of the Mind in America
Perry Miller
(1965)
The Greenback Era
Irwin Unger
(1964)
Puritan Village: The Formation of a New England Town
Sumner Chilton Powell
(1963)
Washington, Village and Capital, 1800–1878
Constance McLaughlin Green
(1962)
The Triumphant Empire: Thunder-Clouds Gather in the West, 1763–1766
Lawrence H. Gipson
(1961)
Between War and Peace: The Potsdam Conference
Herbert Feis
(1960)
In the Days of McKinley
Margaret Leech
(1959)
The Republican Era: 1869–1901
Leonard D. White and Jean Schneider
(1958)
Banks and Politics in America
Bray Hammond
(1957)
Russia Leaves the War: Soviet-American Relations, 1917–1920
George F. Kennan
(1956)
The Age of Reform
Richard Hofstadter
(1955)
Great River: The Rio Grande in North American History
Paul Horgan
(1954)
A Stillness at Appomattox
Bruce Catton
(1953)
The Era of Good Feelings
George Dangerfield
(1952)
The Uprooted
Oscar Handlin
(1951)
The Old Northwest, Pioneer Period 1815–1840
R. Carlyle Buley
(1950)
Art and Life in America
Oliver W. Larkin
(1949)
The Disruption of American Democracy
Roy Franklin Nichols
(1948)
Across the Wide Missouri
Bernard DeVoto
(1947)
Scientists Against Time
James Phinney Baxter III
(1946)
The Age of Jackson
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
(1945)
Unfinished Business
Stephen Bonsal
(1944)
The Growth of American Thought
Merle Curti
(1943)
Paul Revere and the World He Lived In
Esther Forbes
(1942)
Reveille in Washington, 1860–1865
Margaret Leech
(1941)
The Atlantic Migration, 1607–1860
Marcus Lee Hansen
(1940)
Abraham Lincoln: The War Years
Carl Sandburg
(1939)
A History of American Magazines
Frank Luther Mott
(1938)
The Road to Reunion, 1865–1900
Paul Herman Buck
(1937)
The Flowering of New England, 1815–1865
Van Wyck Brooks
(1936)
A Constitutional History of the United States
Andrew C. McLaughlin
(1935)
The Colonial Period of American History
Charles McLean Andrews
(1934)
The People's Choice
Herbert Agar
(1933)
The Significance of Sections in American History
Frederick J. Turner
(1932)
My Experiences in the World War
John J. Pershing
(1931)
The Coming of the War, 1914
Bernadotte E. Schmitt
(1930)
The War of Independence
Claude H. Van Tyne
(1929)
The Organization and Administration of the Union Army, 1861–1865
Fred Albert Shannon
(1928)
Main Currents in American Thought
Vernon Louis Parrington
(1927)
Pinckney's Treaty
Samuel Flagg Bemis
(1926)
A History of the United States
Edward Channing
(1925)
History of the American Frontier
Frederic L. Paxson
(1924)
The American Revolution: A Constitutional Interpretation
Charles Howard McIlwain
(1923)
The Supreme Court in United States History
Charles Warren
(1922)
The Founding of New England
James Truslow Adams
(1921)
The Victory at Sea
William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick
(1920)
The War with Mexico
Justin H. Smith
(1919)
No award given
(1918)
A History of the Civil War, 1861-1865
James Ford Rhodes
(1917)
With Americans of Past and Present Days
Jean Jules Jusserand
