The Award Tally
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Mark Lynton History Prize

Lukas Prize Project (administered by Columbia Journalism School and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard)

An annual award honoring a book of history on any subject that best combines intellectual distinction with felicity of style, awarded as part of the J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project.

Search through 1,818 books

2026

  1. The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World

    William Dalrymple

    Won
  2. The Zorg: A Tale of Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery

    Siddharth Kara

    Shortlisted

2025

  1. Native Nations: A Millennium in North America

    Kathleen DuVal

    Won
  2. COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War

    Edda L. Fields-Black

    Shortlisted
  3. Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery

    Seth Rockman

    Shortlisted

  4. Savings and Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman’s Bank

    Justene Hill Edwards

    Shortlisted

  5. The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports

    Michael Waters

    Shortlisted

2024

  1. The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History

    Ned Blackhawk

    Won
  2. Anansi’s Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World

    Yepoka Yeebo

    Shortlisted
  3. Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights

    Dylan C. Penningroth

    Shortlisted
  4. Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia

    Gary J. Bass

    Shortlisted
  5. King: A Life

    Jonathan Eig

    Shortlisted

2023

  1. Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: The Reporters Who Took on a World at War

    Deborah Cohen

    Won
  2. Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire & Revolution in the Borderlands

    Kelly Lytle Hernández

    Shortlisted
  3. G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century

    Beverly Gage

    Shortlisted

  4. Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America

    Pekka Hämäläinen

    Shortlisted
  5. The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family

    Kerri K. Greenidge

    Shortlisted

2022

  1. Surviving Katyń: Stalin's Polish Massacre and the Search for Truth

    Jane Rogoyska

    Won
  2. All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake

    Tiya Miles

    Shortlisted

  3. The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America

    Noah Feldman

    Shortlisted

  4. The Invention of Miracles: Language, Power, and Alexander Graham Bell’s Quest to End Deafness

    Katie Booth

    Shortlisted

  5. You Are Not American: Citizenship Stripping from Dred Scott to the Dreamers

    Amanda Frost

    Shortlisted

2021

  1. A Question Of Freedom: The Families Who Challenged Slavery from the Nation's Founding to the Civil War

    William G. Thomas III

    Won

  2. The Broken Heart of America

    Walter Johnson

    Shortlisted

  3. The Dead Are Arising

    Les Payne and Tamara Payne

    Shortlisted

  4. Those Who Forget

    Géraldine Schwarz

    Shortlisted
  5. Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All

    Martha S. Jones

    Shortlisted

2020

  1. Black Radical: The Life and Times of William Monroe Trotter

    Kerri K. Greenidge

    Won
  2. El Norte: The Epic and Forgotten Story of Hispanic North America

    Carrie Gibson

    Shortlisted

  3. Hitler

    Brendan Simms

    Shortlisted

  4. How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States

    Daniel Immerwahr

    Shortlisted

  5. Lakota America

    Pekka Hämäläinen

    Shortlisted

2019

  1. The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke

    Jeffrey C. Stewart

    Won
  2. The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America's Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War

    Andrew Delbanco

    Won
  3. Asperger's Children

    Edith Sheffer

    Shortlisted
  4. Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom

    David W. Blight

    Shortlisted

  5. Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History

    Steven J. Zipperstein

    Shortlisted

2018

  1. Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941

    Stephen Kotkin

    Won
  2. Ali: A Life

    Jonathan Eig

    Shortlisted
  3. Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder

    Caroline Fraser

    Shortlisted
  4. The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America

    Frances FitzGerald

    Shortlisted

  5. The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America

    Edward L. Ayers

    Shortlisted

2017

  1. City of Dreams: The 400-Year Epic History of Immigrant New York

    Tyler Anbinder

    Won

  2. Just Another Southern Town: Mary Church Terrell and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Nation’s Capital

    Joan Quigley

    Shortlisted
  3. Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939

    Adam Hochschild

    Shortlisted

  4. The Brazen Age: New York City and the American Empire - Politics, Art and Bohemia

    David Reid

    Shortlisted

  5. The Defender: How the Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America

    Ethan Michaeli

    Shortlisted

2016

  1. KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps

    Nikolaus Wachsmann

    Won
  2. Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning

    Timothy Snyder

    Shortlisted
  3. Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America

    T. J. Stiles

    Shortlisted

  4. The Ottoman Endgame: War, Revolution, and the Making of the Modern Middle East, 1908-1923

    Sean McMeekin

    Shortlisted

  5. The Train to Crystal City: FDR’s Secret Prison Exchange Program and America’s Only Family Internment Camp During World War II

    Jan Jarboe Russell

    Shortlisted

2015

  1. Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion

    Harold Holzer

    Won
  2. Napoleon: A Life

    Andrew Roberts

    Shortlisted

2014

  1. Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin

    Jill Lepore

    Won
  2. The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914

    Christopher Clark

    Shortlisted

2013

  1. The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson

    Robert A. Caro

    Won
  2. The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy

    David Nasaw

    Shortlisted

2012

  1. Common Sense: A Political History

    Sophia Rosenfeld

    Won
  2. Conversions: Two Family Stories from the Reformation and Modern America

    Craig Harline

    Shortlisted

  3. Pox: An American History

    Michael Willrich

    Shortlisted

2011

  1. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

    Isabel Wilkerson

    Won
  2. Claude Levi-Strauss: The Poet in His Laboratory

    Patrick Wilcken

    Shortlisted

2010

  1. The Greeks and Greek Love: A Bold New Exploration of the Ancient World

    James Davidson

    Won

2009

  1. Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World

    Timothy Brook

    Won

2008

  1. Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America

    Peter Silver

    Won

2007

  1. Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa, 1787–2005

    James T. Campbell

    Won

2006

  1. The Peabody Sisters: Three Women who Ignited American Romanticism

    Megan Marshall

    Won

2005

  1. Beasts of the Field: A Narrative History of California Farmworkers, 1769–1913

    Richard Steven Street

    Won

2004

  1. River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West

    Rebecca Solnit

    Won

2003

  1. The Diligent: A Voyage Through the Worlds of Slave Trade

    Robert W. Harms

    Won

2002

  1. A Past in Hiding: Memory and Survival in Nazi Germany

    Mark Roseman

    Won

2001

  1. Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754–1766

    Fred Anderson

    Won

2000

  1. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II

    John Dower

    Won

1999

  1. King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa

    Adam Hochschild

    Won