The Award Tally
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Pulitzer Prize for History

The Pulitzer Prize Board, Columbia University

Awarded annually for a distinguished book about the history of the United States, recognizing outstanding historical scholarship and writing.

Search through 1,818 books

2026

  1. We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution

    Jill Lepore

    Won
  2. Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City

    Bench Ansfield

    Shortlisted
  3. King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation

    Scott Anderson

    Shortlisted

2025

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

    Edda L. Fields-Black

    Won
  2. Native Nations: A Millennium in North America

    Kathleen DuVal

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

    Seth Rockman

    Shortlisted

2024

  1. No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston's Black Workers in the Civil War Era

    Jacqueline Jones

    Won
  2. American Anarchy: The Epic Struggle between Immigrant Radicals and the US Government at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century

    Michael Willrich

    Shortlisted
  3. Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion

    Elliott West

    Shortlisted

2023

  1. Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power

    Jefferson Cowie

    Won

  2. Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America

    Michael John Witgen

    Shortlisted

  3. Watergate: A New History

    Garrett M. Graff

    Shortlisted

2022

  1. Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America

    Nicole Eustace

    Won
  2. Cuba: An American History

    Ada Ferrer

    Won

  3. Until Justice Be Done: America's First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction

    Kate Masur

    Shortlisted

2021

  1. Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America

    Marcia Chatelain

    Won

  2. The Deviant's War: The Homosexual vs. the United States of America

    Eric Cervini

    Shortlisted

  3. The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West

    Megan Kate Nelson

    Shortlisted

2020

  1. Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America

    W. Caleb McDaniel

    Won

  2. Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership

    Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

    Shortlisted
  3. The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America

    Greg Grandin

    Shortlisted

2019

  1. Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom

    David W. Blight

    Won
  2. American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic

    Victoria Johnson

    Shortlisted
  3. Civilizing Torture: An American Tradition

    W. Fitzhugh Brundage

    Shortlisted

2018

  1. The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea

    Jack E. Davis

    Won

  2. Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics

    Kim Phillips-Fein

    Shortlisted

  3. Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots against Hollywood and America

    Steven J. Ross

    Shortlisted

2017

  1. Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy

    Heather Ann. Thompson

    Won
  2. Brothers at Arms: American Independence and the Men of France and Spain Who Saved It

    Larrie D. Ferreiro

    Shortlisted

  3. New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America

    Wendy Warren

    Shortlisted

2016

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

    T. J. Stiles

    Won

  2. Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War

    Brian Matthew Jordan

    Shortlisted

  3. Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor

    James M. Scott

    Shortlisted

  4. The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency

    Annie Jacobsen

    Shortlisted

2015

  1. Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People

    Elizabeth A. Fenn

    Won
  2. An Empire on the Edge: How Britain Came to Fight America

    Nick Bunker

    Shortlisted
  3. Empire of Cotton: A Global History

    Sven Beckert

    Shortlisted

2014

  1. The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832

    Alan Taylor

    Won
  2. A Dreadful Deceit: The Myth of Race from the Colonial Era to Obama's America

    Jacqueline Jones

    Shortlisted
  3. Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

    Eric Schlosser

    Shortlisted

2013

  1. Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam

    Fredrik Logevall

    Won
  2. Lincoln's Code: The Laws of War in American History

    John Fabian Witt

    Shortlisted

  3. The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America: The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600-1675

    Bernard Bailyn

    Shortlisted

2012

  1. Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention

    Manning Marable

    Won
  2. Empires, Nations and Families: A History of the North American West, 1800-1860

    Anne Hyde

    Shortlisted
  3. Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America

    Richard White

    Shortlisted

  4. The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama Bin Laden

    Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan

    Shortlisted

2011

  1. The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery

    Eric Foner

    Won
  2. Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South

    Stephanie McCurry

    Shortlisted
  3. Eden on the Charles: The Making of Boston

    Michael J. Rawson

    Shortlisted

2010

  1. Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

    Liaquat Ahamed

    Won
  2. Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815

    Gordon S. Wood

    Shortlisted
  3. Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City

    Greg Grandin

    Shortlisted

2009

  1. The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family

    Annette Gordon-Reed

    Won

  2. The Liberal Hour: Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960s

    G. Calvin Mackenzie and Robert Weisbrot

    Shortlisted
  3. This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War

    Drew Gilpin Faust

    Shortlisted

2008

  1. What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America 1815–1848

    Daniel Walker Howe

    Won

  2. Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power

    Robert Dallek

    Shortlisted

  3. The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War

    David Halberstam

    Shortlisted

2007

  1. The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation

    Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff

    Won
  2. Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War

    Nathaniel Philbrick

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

    James T. Campbell

    Shortlisted

2006

  1. Polio: An American Story

    David Oshinsky

    Won
  2. New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan

    Jill Lepore

    Shortlisted
  3. The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln

    Sean Wilentz

    Shortlisted

2005

  1. Washington's Crossing

    David Hackett Fischer

    Won
  2. Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age

    Kevin Boyle

    Shortlisted
  3. Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810-1860, volumes 1 & 2

    Michael O'Brien

    Shortlisted

2004

  1. A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration

    Steven Hahn

    Won

  2. Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center

    Daniel Okrent

    Shortlisted
  3. They Marched into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967

    David Maraniss

    Shortlisted

2003

  1. An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942–1943

    Rick Atkinson

    Won
  2. At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America

    Philip Dray

    Shortlisted

  3. Rereading Sex: Battles over Sexual Knowledge and Suppression in Nineteenth Century America

    Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz

    Shortlisted

2002

  1. The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America

    Louis Menand

    Won
  2. Deep Souths: Delta, Piedmont, and the Sea Island Society in the Age of Segregation

    J. William Harris

    Shortlisted
  3. Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America

    Daniel K. Richter

    Shortlisted

2001

  1. Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation

    Joseph J. Ellis

    Won
  2. The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States

    Alexander Keyssar

    Shortlisted
  3. Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War

    Frances FitzGerald

    Shortlisted

2000

  1. Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War

    David M. Kennedy

    Won

  2. Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier

    James H. Merrell

    Shortlisted

  3. The Cousins' Wars: Religion, Politics and the Triumph of Anglo-America

    Kevin Phillips

    Shortlisted

1999

  1. Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898

    Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace

    Won

  2. In a Barren Land: American Indian Dispossession and Survival

    Paula Mitchell Marks

    Shortlisted

  3. This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age

    William E. Burrows

    Shortlisted

1998

  1. Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion

    Edward J. Larson

    Won
  2. Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets off a Struggle for the Soul of America

    J. Anthony Lukas

    Shortlisted
  3. Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History

    Rogers Smith

    Shortlisted

1997

  1. Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution

    Jack N. Rakove

    Won

  2. Founding Mothers and Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society

    Mary Beth Norton

    Shortlisted

  3. The Battle for Christmas: A Cultural History of America's Most Cherished Holiday

    Stephen Nissenbaum

    Shortlisted

1996

  1. William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic

    Alan Taylor

    Won
  2. Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb

    Richard Rhodes

    Shortlisted

  3. The Sacred Fire of Liberty: James Madison and the Founding of the Federal Republic

    Lance Banning

    Shortlisted

1995

  1. No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II

    Doris Kearns Goodwin

    Won

  2. Lincoln in American Memory

    Merrill D. Peterson

    Shortlisted

  3. Stories of Scottsboro

    James Goodman

    Shortlisted

1994

  1. Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK

    Gerald Posner

    Shortlisted
  2. Crime and Punishment in American History

    Lawrence M. Friedman

    Shortlisted

  3. William Faulkner and Southern History

    Joel Williamson

    Shortlisted

1993

  1. The Radicalism of the American Revolution

    Gordon S. Wood

    Won
  2. Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America

    Garry Wills

    Shortlisted

  3. The Promise of the New South: Life after Reconstruction

    Edward L. Ayers

    Shortlisted

1992

  1. The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties

    Mark E. Neely, Jr.

    Won
  2. A Very Thin Line: The Iran-Contra Affairs

    Theodore Draper

    Shortlisted
  3. Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West

    William Cronon

    Shortlisted

  4. Profits in the Wilderness: Entrepreneurship and the Founding of New England Towns in the Seventeenth Century

    John Frederick Martin

    Shortlisted

  5. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815

    Richard White

    Shortlisted

1991

  1. A Midwife's Tale

    Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

    Won
  2. America in 1857: A Nation on the Brink

    Kenneth M. Stampp

    Shortlisted
  3. Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939

    Lizabeth Cohen

    Shortlisted

  4. The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy

    Hugh Davis Graham

    Shortlisted

1990

  1. In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines

    Stanley Karnow

    Won
  2. American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm 1870–1970

    Thomas P. Hughes

    Shortlisted

  3. The Image of the Black in Western Art, Volume IV: From the American Revolution to World War I

    Hugh Honour

    Shortlisted

1989

  1. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era

    James M. McPherson

    Won
  2. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-1963

    Taylor Branch

    Won
  3. A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam

    Neil Sheehan

    Shortlisted
  4. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877

    Eric Foner

    Shortlisted

1988

  1. The Launching of Modern American Science, 1846–1876

    Robert V. Bruce

    Won

  2. The Care of Strangers: The Rise of America's Hospital System

    Charles E. Rosenberg

    Shortlisted

  3. The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865–1925

    David Montgomery

    Shortlisted

1987

  1. Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution

    Bernard Bailyn

    Won
  2. Bearing The Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

    David J. Garrow

    Shortlisted
  3. Eisenhower: At War, 1943–1945

    David Eisenhower

    Shortlisted

1986

  1. ...the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age

    Walter A. McDougall

    Won
  2. Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America

    Kerby A. Miller

    Shortlisted
  3. Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present

    Jacqueline Jones

    Shortlisted

  4. Novus Ordo Seclorum: the Intellectual Origins of the Constitution

    Forrest McDonald

    Shortlisted

1985

  1. Prophets of Regulation: Charles Francis Adams, Louis D. Brandeis, James M. Landis, Alfred E. Kahn

    Thomas K. McCraw

    Won

  2. The Crucible of Race: Black-White Relations in the American South since Emancipation

    Joel Williamson

    Shortlisted

  3. The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians

    Francis Paul Prucha

    Shortlisted

1983

  1. The Transformation of Virginia, 1740–1790

    Rhys L. Isaac

    Won
  2. Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South

    Bertram Wyatt-Brown

    Shortlisted

  3. The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789

    Robert Middlekauff

    Shortlisted

1982

  1. Mary Chesnut's Civil War

    C. Vann Woodward

    Won

  2. Power and Culture: The Japanese-American War, 1941–1945

    Akira Iriye

    Shortlisted
  3. White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History

    George M. Fredrickson

    Shortlisted

1981

  1. American Education: The National Experience, 1783–1876

    Lawrence A. Cremin

    Won

  2. A Search for Power: The 'Weaker Sex' in Seventeenth Century New England

    Lyle Koehler

    Shortlisted

  3. Over Here: The First World War and American Society

    David M. Kennedy

    Shortlisted

1980

  1. Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery

    Leon F. Litwack

    Won

  2. The Plains Across: The Overland Emigrants on the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840–60

    John B. Unruh

    Shortlisted

  3. The Urban Crucible: Social Change, Political Consciousness and the Origins of the American Revolution

    Gary B. Nash

    Shortlisted

1979

  1. The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics

    Don E. Fehrenbacher

    Won

1978

  1. The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business

    Alfred D. Chandler, Jr.

    Won

1977

  1. The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861

    David M. Potter† (Completed and edited by Don E. Fehrenbacher)

    Won

1976

  1. Lamy of Santa Fe

    Paul Horgan

    Won

1975

  1. Jefferson and His Time

    Dumas Malone

    Won

1974

  1. The Americans: The Democratic Experience

    Daniel J. Boorstin

    Won

1973

  1. People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization

    Michael Kammen

    Won

1972

  1. Neither Black nor White: Slavery and Race Relations in Brazil and the United States

    Carl N. Degler

    Won

1971

  1. Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom

    James MacGregor Burns

    Won

1970

  1. Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department

    Dean Acheson

    Won

1969

  1. Origins of the Fifth Amendment: The Right against Self-Incrimination

    Leonard W. Levy

    Won

1968

  1. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

    Bernard Bailyn

    Won

1967

  1. Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West

    William H. Goetzmann

    Won

1966

  1. The Life of the Mind in America

    Perry Miller†

    Won

1965

  1. The Greenback Era: A Social and Political History of American Finance, 1865–1879

    Irwin Unger

    Won

1964

  1. Puritan Village: The Formation of a New England Town

    Sumner Chilton Powell

    Won

1963

  1. Washington: Village and Capital, 1800–1878

    Constance McLaughlin Green

    Won

1962

  1. The Triumphant Empire: Thunder-Clouds Gather in the West, 1763–1766

    Lawrence H. Gipson

    Won

1961

  1. Between War and Peace: The Potsdam Conference

    Herbert Feis

    Won

1960

  1. In the Days of McKinley

    Margaret Leech

    Won

1959

  1. The Republican Era: 1869–1901

    Leonard D. White† and Jean Schneider

    Won

1958

  1. Banks and Politics in America

    Bray Hammond

    Won

1957

  1. Russia Leaves the War: Soviet-American Relations, 1917–1920

    George F. Kennan

    Won

1956

  1. The Age of Reform

    Richard Hofstadter

    Won

1955

  1. Great River: The Rio Grande in North American History

    Paul Horgan

    Won

1954

  1. A Stillness at Appomattox

    Bruce Catton

    Won

1953

  1. The Era of Good Feelings

    George Dangerfield

    Won

1952

  1. The Uprooted

    Oscar Handlin

    Won

1951

  1. The Old Northwest, Pioneer Period 1815–1840

    R. Carlyle Buley

    Won

1950

  1. Art and Life in America

    Oliver W. Larkin

    Won

1949

  1. The Disruption of American Democracy

    Roy Franklin Nichols

    Won

1948

  1. Across the Wide Missouri

    Bernard DeVoto

    Won

1947

  1. Scientists against Time

    James Phinney Baxter III

    Won

1946

  1. The Age of Jackson

    Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

    Won

1945

  1. Unfinished Business

    Stephen Bonsal

    Won

1944

  1. The Growth of American Thought

    Merle Curti

    Won

1943

  1. Paul Revere and the World He Lived In

    Esther Forbes

    Won

1942

  1. Reveille in Washington, 1860–1865

    Margaret Leech

    Won

1941

  1. The Atlantic Migration, 1607–1860

    Marcus Lee Hansen†

    Won

1940

  1. Abraham Lincoln: The War Years

    Carl Sandburg

    Won

1939

  1. A History of American Magazines

    Frank Luther Mott

    Won

1938

  1. The Road to Reunion, 1865–1900

    Paul Herman Buck

    Won

1937

  1. The Flowering of New England: 1815–1865

    Van Wyck Brooks

    Won

1936

  1. A Constitutional History of the United States

    Andrew C. McLaughlin

    Won

1935

  1. The Colonial Period of American History

    Charles McLean Andrews

    Won

1934

  1. The People's Choice

    Herbert Agar

    Won

1933

  1. The Significance of Sections in American History

    Frederick Jackson Turner†

    Won

1932

  1. My Experiences in the World War

    John J. Pershing

    Won

1931

  1. The Coming of the War, 1914

    Bernadotte E. Schmitt

    Won

1930

  1. The War of Independence

    Claude H. Van Tyne†

    Won

1929

  1. The Organization and Administration of the Union Army, 1861–1865

    Fred Albert Shannon

    Won

1928

  1. Main Currents in American Thought

    Vernon Louis Parrington

    Won

1927

  1. Pinckney's Treaty

    Samuel Flagg Bemis

    Won

1926

  1. A History of the United States, Vol. VI: The War for Southern Independence (1849–1865)

    Edward Channing

    Won

1925

  1. History of the American Frontier

    Frederic L. Paxson

    Won

1924

  1. The American Revolution: A Constitutional Interpretation

    Charles Howard McIlwain

    Won

1923

  1. The Supreme Court in United States History

    Charles Warren

    Won

1922

  1. The Founding of New England

    James Truslow Adams

    Won

1921

  1. The Victory at Sea

    William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick

    Won

1920

  1. The War with Mexico

    Justin H. Smith

    Won

1918

  1. A History of the Civil War, 1861–1865

    James Ford Rhodes

    Won

1917

  1. With Americans of Past and Present Days

    Jean Jules Jusserand

    Won