The Award Tally
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Bancroft Prize

Columbia University Libraries

An annual American award given by Columbia University for distinguished books on the history of the Americas (particularly the United States) as well as works on diplomacy, recognized as one of the most prestigious prizes in the field of history.

Search through 1,818 books

2026

  1. John Doe Chinaman: A Forgotten History of Chinese Life under American Racial Law

    Beth Lew-Williams

    Won
  2. Vested Interests: Trusteeship and Native Dispossession in the United States

    Emilie Connolly

    Won

2025

  1. A Machine to Move Ocean and Earth: The Making of the Port of Los Angeles and America

    James Tejani

    Won
  2. Native Nations: A Millennium in North America

    Kathleen DuVal

    Won

2024

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

    Elliott West

    Won
  2. Fire and Rain: Nixon, Kissinger and the Wars in Southeast Asia

    Carolyn Woods Eisenberg

    Won

2023

  1. Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands

    Kelly L. Hernández

    Won
  2. G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century

    Beverly Gage

    Won
  3. The Sewing Girl's Tale: A Story of Crime and Consequences in Revolutionary America

    John W. Sweet

    Won

2022

  1. The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics

    Mae. Ngai

    Won
  2. Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance

    Mia. Bay

    Won

2021

  1. Katrina: A History, 1915-2015

    Andy Horowitz

    Won
  2. Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Country

    Claudio Saunt

    Won

2020

  1. Illusions of Emancipation: The Pursuit of Freedom and Equality in the Twilight of Slavery

    Joseph P. Reidy

    Won
  2. Saving America's Cities: Ed Logue and the Struggle to Renew Urban America in the Suburban Age

    Lizabeth Cohen

    Won

2019

  1. Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom

    David W. Blight

    Won
  2. Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip's War

    Lisa Brooks

    Won

2018

  1. Darkness Falls on the Land of Light: Experiencing Religious Awakenings in Eighteenth-Century New England

    Douglas L. Winiarski

    Won
  2. God's Red Son: The Ghost Dance Religion and the Making of Modern America

    Louis S. Warren

    Won
  3. Implacable Foes: War in the Pacific, 1944-1945

    Waldo Heinrichs, Marc Gallicchio

    Won

2017

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

    Heather Ann. Thompson

    Won
  2. Remaking the American Patient: How Madison Avenue and Modern Medicine Turned Patients Into Consumers

    Nancy Tomes

    Won

  3. The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America

    Andres Resendez

    Won

2016

  1. Border Law: The First Seminole War and American Nationhood

    Deborah Rosen

    Won
  2. Madison's Hand: Revising the Constitutional Convention

    Mary Sarah Bilder

    Won
  3. The Saltwater Frontier: Indians and the Contest for the American Coast

    Andrew Lipman

    Won

2015

  1. Empire of Cotton: A Global History

    Sven Beckert

    Won
  2. The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World

    Greg Grandin

    Won

2014

  1. A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling over the Memory of Sand Creek

    Ari. Kelman

    Won
  2. Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time

    Ira. Katznelson

    Won

2013

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

    John Fabian Witt

    Won
  2. The Mortal Sea: Fishing the Atlantic in the Age of Sail

    W. Jeffrey Bolster

    Won

2012

  1. Age of Fracture

    Daniel Rodgers

    Won
  2. Courage to Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Rights Movement

    Tomiko Brown-Nagin

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

    Anne Hyde

    Won

2011

  1. Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580-1865

    Christopher Tomlins

    Won
  2. Ourselves Unborn: A History of the Fetus in Modern America

    Sara Dubow

    Won
  3. The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery

    Eric Foner

    Won

2010

  1. Abigail Adams

    Woody Holton

    Won
  2. Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits

    Linda Gordon

    Won
  3. White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, and the Removal of Indigenous Children in the American West and Australia, 1880-1940

    Margaret D. Jacobs

    Won

2009

  1. Killing for Coal: America's Deadliest Labor War

    Thomas G. Andrews

    Won
  2. The Comanche Empire

    Pekka Hämäläinen

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

    Drew Gilpin Faust

    Won

2008

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

    Peter Silver

    Won
  2. The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product that Defined America

    Allan M. Brandt

    Won
  3. The Populist Vision

    Charles Postel

    Won

2007

  1. Mockingbird Song: Ecological Landscapes of the South

    Jack Temple Kirby

    Won
  2. William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism

    Robert D. Richardson

    Won

2006

  1. Dwelling Place: A Plantation Epic

    Erskine Clarke

    Won
  2. The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times

    Odd Arne Westad

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

    Sean Wilentz

    Won

2005

  1. Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810–1860

    Michael O'Brien

    Won
  2. From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality

    Michael J. Klarman

    Won
  3. Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s Through the Civil War

    Melvin Patrick Ely

    Won

2004

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

    Steven Hahn

    Won
  2. In the Presence of Mine Enemies: War in the Heart of America, 1859–1863

    Edward L. Ayers

    Won
  3. Jonathan Edwards: A Life

    George M. Marsden

    Won

2003

  1. Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands

    James F. Brooks

    Won
  2. The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670–1717

    Alan Gallay

    Won

2002

  1. In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th-Century America

    Alice Kessler-Harris

    Won
  2. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory

    David W. Blight

    Won

2001

  1. Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture

    Michael Bellesiles

    Won
  2. Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush

    Susan Lee. Johnson

    Won
  3. The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst

    David Nasaw

    Won

2000

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

    John Dower

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

    James H. Merrell

    Won
  3. The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction

    Linda Gordon

    Won

1999

  1. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America

    Ira. Berlin

    Won
  2. Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Low Country

    Philip D. Morgan

    Won
  3. The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity

    Jill Lepore

    Won

1998

  1. Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt

    Christine Leigh Heyrman

    Won
  2. The Clash: A History of U.S.-Japan Relations

    Walter LaFeber

    Won
  3. The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit

    Thomas J. Sugrue

    Won

1997

  1. Explicit and Authentic Acts: Amending the U.S. Constitution, 1776–1995

    David E. Kyvig

    Won
  2. Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974

    James T. Patterson

    Won

1996

  1. Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography

    David S. Reynolds

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

    Alan Taylor

    Won

1995

  1. Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi

    John Dittmer

    Won
  2. The Refiner's Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644–1844

    John L. Brooke

    Won

1994

  1. The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788–1800

    Stanley Elkins, Eric McKitrick

    Won
  2. Tumult and Silence at Second Creek: An Inquiry into a Civil War Slave Conspiracy

    Winthrop D. Jordan

    Won
  3. W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919

    David Levering Lewis

    Won

1993

  1. A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War

    Melvyn P. Leffler

    Won
  2. The Private Years

    Charles Capper

    Won

1992

  1. Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West

    William Cronon

    Won
  2. The Destructive War: William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans

    Charles Royster

    Won

1991

  1. A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785–1812

    Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

    Won
  2. Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939

    Lizabeth Cohen

    Won

1990

  1. Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow

    Neil R. McMillen

    Won
  2. The Indians' New World: Catawbas and Their Neighbors from European Contact through the Era of Removal

    James H. Merrell

    Won

1989

  1. Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America

    Edmund S. Morgan

    Won
  2. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877

    Eric Foner

    Won

1988

  1. The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon

    Michael S. Sherry

    Won
  2. Unfree Labor: American Slavery and Russian Serfdom

    Peter Kolchin

    Won

1987

  1. A Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise: Merchants and Economic Development in Revolutionary Philadelphia

    Thomas Doerflinger

    Won
  2. Roots of Violence in Black Philadelphia, 1860–1900

    Roger Lane

    Won

1986

  1. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States

    Kenneth T. Jackson

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

    Jacqueline Jones

    Won

1985

  1. The Free Women of Petersburg: Status and Culture in a Southern Town, 1784–1860

    Suzanne Lebsock

    Won
  2. The Life and Times of Cotton Mather

    Kenneth Silverman

    Won

1984

  1. Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901–1915

    Louis R. Harlan

    Won
  2. The Social Transformation of American Medicine: The Rise of a Sovereign Profession and the Making of a Vast Industry

    Paul Starr

    Won

1983

  1. Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England

    John Putnam Demos

    Won
  2. Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist

    Nick Salvatore

    Won

1982

  1. A People in Revolution: The American Revolution and Political Society in New York, 1760–1790

    Edward Countryman

    Won
  2. Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790–1865

    Mary P. Ryan

    Won

1981

  1. Alice James: A Biography

    Jean Strouse

    Won
  2. Walter Lipmann and the American Century

    Ronald Steel

    Won

1980

  1. Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s

    Donald Worster

    Won
  2. Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945

    Robert Dallek

    Won
  3. Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826–1860

    Thomas Dublin

    Won

1979

  1. Allies of a Kind: The United States, Britain, and the War Against Japan, 1941–1945

    Christopher Thorne

    Won
  2. Rockdale: The Growth of An American Village in the Early Industrial Revolution

    Anthony F. C. Wallace

    Won

1978

  1. The Transformation of American Law, 1780–1860

    Morton J. Horwitz

    Won
  2. The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business

    Alfred D. Chandler, Jr.

    Won

1977

  1. Class and Community: The Industrial Revolution in Lynn

    Alan Dawley

    Won

  2. Slave Population and Economy in Jamaica, 1807–1834

    Barry W. Higman

    Won
  3. The Minutemen and Their World

    Robert A. Gross

    Won

1976

  1. Edith Wharton: A Biography

    R. W. B. Lewis

    Won
  2. The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770–1823

    David Brion Davis

    Won

1975

  1. Deterrence in American Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice

    Alexander L. George, Richard Smoke

    Won
  2. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made

    Eugene D. Genovese

    Won
  3. Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery

    Robert William Fogel, Stanley L. Engerman

    Won

1974

  1. Frederick Jackson Turner: Historian, Scholar, Teacher

    Ray Allen Billington

    Won
  2. The Devil and John Foster Dulles

    Townsend Hoopes

    Won

  3. The Other Bostonians: Poverty and Progress in the American Metropolis, 1880–1970

    Stephan Thernstrom

    Won

1973

  1. Booker T. Washington

    Louis R. Harlan

    Won
  2. Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam

    Frances FitzGerald

    Won
  3. The United States and the Origins of the Cold War

    John Lewis Gaddis

    Won

1972

  1. Neither Black Nor White

    Carl N. Degler

    Won
  2. The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages

    Samuel E. Morison

    Won
  3. The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596–1728

    Robert Middlekauff

    Won

1971

  1. Andrew Carnegie

    Joseph Frazier Wall

    Won
  2. Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger

    David M. Kennedy

    Won
  3. The Image Empire: A History of Broadcasting in the United States from 1953

    Erik Barnouw

    Won

1970

  1. Charles Willson Peale

    Charles Coleman Sellers

    Won
  2. Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South

    Dan T. Carter

    Won
  3. The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787

    Gordon S. Wood

    Won

1969

  1. The Brains Trust

    Rexford Guy. Tugwell

    Won
  2. White over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550–1812

    Winthrop D. Jordan

    Won

  3. Woodrow Wilson and World Politics: America's Response to War and Revolution

    N. Gordon Levin, Jr.

    Won

1968

  1. A History of Negro Education in the South from 1619 to the Present

    Henry Allen Bullock

    Won
  2. From Puritan to Yankee: Character and Social Order in Connecticut, 1690–1765

    Richard L. Bushman

    Won
  3. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

    Bernard Bailyn

    Won

1967

  1. James K. Polk, Continentalist, 1843–1846

    Charles Grier Sellers

    Won
  2. Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, 1816–1836

    William W. Freehling

    Won
  3. The Washington Community, 1800–1828

    James Sterling Young

    Won

1966

  1. Between Two Empires: The Ordeal of the Philippines, 1929–1946

    Theodore W. Friend, III

    Won
  2. The Peacemakers: The Great Powers and American Independence

    Richard B. Morris

    Won

1965

  1. Castlereagh and Adams: England and the United States, 1812–1823

    Bradford Perkins

    Won
  2. Portrait of a General: Sir Henry Clinton in the War of Independence

    William B. Willcox

    Won

  3. The United States and the Far Eastern Crisis of 1933–1938

    Dorothy Borg

    Won

1964

  1. Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932–1940

    William E. Leuchtenburg

    Won
  2. Power, Freedom, and Diplomacy: The Foreign Policy of the United States of America

    Paul Seabury

    Won
  3. The Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison

    John L. Thomas

    Won

1963

  1. John Adams

    Page Smith

    Won
  2. Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision

    Roberta Wohlstetter

    Won
  3. The Might of Nations: World Politics in Our Time

    John G. Stoessinger

    Won

1962

  1. Charles Francis Adams, 1807–1866

    Martin B. Duberman

    Won
  2. The Transformation of the School

    Lawrence A. Cremin

    Won
  3. To the Farewell Address: Ideas of Early American Foreign Policy

    Felix Gilbert

    Won

1961

  1. The Jefferson Image in the American Mind

    Merrill D. Peterson

    Won
  2. Wilson: The Struggle for Neutrality, 1914–1915

    Arthur S. Link

    Won

1960

  1. In the Days of McKinley

    Margaret Leech

    Won
  2. The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760–1800

    R. R. Palmer

    Won

1959

  1. Henry Adams, The Middle Years

    Ernest Samuels

    Won
  2. The Americans: The Colonial Experience

    Daniel J. Boorstin

    Won

1958

  1. A History of American Magazines

    Frank Luther Mott

    Won
  2. The Crisis of the Old Order

    Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

    Won

1957

  1. Russia Leaves the War

    George F. Kennan

    Won
  2. Wilson: The New Freedom

    Arthur S. Link

    Won

1956

  1. Henry Adams

    Elizabeth Stevenson

    Won
  2. Last Full Measure: Lincoln the President

    J. G. Randall, Richard N. Current

    Won

1955

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

    Paul Horgan

    Won
  2. The Jacksonians

    Leonard D. White

    Won

1954

  1. Seedtime of the Republic

    Clinton Rossiter

    Won
  2. The Undeclared War

    William L. Langer, S. Everett Gleason

    Won

1953

  1. Rendezvous with Destiny

    Eric F. Goldman

    Won
  2. The Era of Good Feelings

    George Dangerfield

    Won

1952

  1. Charles Evans Hughes

    Merlo J. Pusey

    Won
  2. Origins of the New South, 1877–1913

    C. Vann Woodward

    Won

1951

  1. Our More Perfect Union

    Arthur N. Holcombe

    Won
  2. Virgin Land

    Henry N. Smith

    Won

1950

  1. Coronado

    Herbert E. Bolton

    Won

  2. The Victorious Year, 1758–1760

    Lawrence H. Gipson

    Won

1949

  1. Roosevelt and Hopkins

    Robert E. Sherwood

    Won
  2. The Rising Sun in the Pacific

    Samuel E. Morison

    Won

1948

  1. Across the Wide Missouri

    Bernard DeVoto

    Won
  2. Ordeal of the Union

    Allan Nevins

    Won