The D. B. Hardeman Prize is a cash prize awarded annually by the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation for the best book that furthers the study of the U.S. Congress in the fields of biography, history, journalism, or political science. Submissions are judged on the basis of five criteria: (1) contribution to scholarship, (2) contribution to the public's understanding of Congress, (3) literary craftsmanship, (4) originality, and (5) depth of research. Members of the national selection committee are: Senator Tom Daschle; Lee Hamilton, Director of The Center on Congress; Thomas Mann of The Brookings Institution; Leslie Sanchez of Impacto Group; and Nancy Beck Young of The University of Houston.[1]
D. Barnard Hardeman, Jr. (1914–1981) was a politician, political scholar, journalist and teacher. He graduated from the University of Texas and the University of Texas Law School and served in the U.S. Army during World War II. Hardeman served in the 52nd and 54th Legislatures representing Grayson and Collin counties in the Texas House of Representatives.[2] Between 1958 and 1961, he worked as an assistant to Sam Rayburn, Speaker of the House, and was Rayburn's official biographer.[3] An avid bibliophile whose book collection numbered more than ten thousand volumes,[4] Hardeman bequeathed his collection of American biographies and political history to the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas.
| Year | Author | Title | Publisher | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | 1980 | Richard F. Fenno Jr. | Home Style: House Members in Their Districts | Little, Brown and Company | |
| 02 | 1982 | Allen Schick | Congress and Money: Budgeting, Spending and Taxing | The Urban Institute | |
| 03 | 1984 | James L. Sundquist | The Decline and Resurgence of Congress | Brookings Institution Press | |
| 04 | 1986 | David Oshinsky | The Free Press | ||
| 05 | 1988 | Paul Light | Artful Work: The Politics of Social Security Reform | Random House | |
| 06 | 1990 | Christopher H. Foreman, Jr. | Signals From the Hill: Congressional Oversight and the Challenge of Social Regulation | Yale University Press | |
| 07 | 1992 | Barbara Sinclair | The Transformation of the U.S. Senate | The Johns Hopkins University Press | |
| 08 | 1994 | Gilbert C. Fite | Richard B. Russell, Jr., Senator From Georgia | The University of North Carolina Press | |
| 09 | 1995 | Carol M. Swain | Black Faces, Black Interests: The Representation of African Americans in Congress | Harvard University Press | |
| 10 | 1995 | John Jacobs | A Rage for Justice: The Passion and Politics of Phillip Burton | University of California Press | |
| 11 | 1996 | William Lee Miller | Arguing About Slavery: The Great Battle in the United States Congress | Alfred A. Knopf | |
| 12 | 1997 | Robert V. Remini | Daniel Webster: The Man and His Time | W. W. Norton and Company | |
| 13 | 1998 | Julian E. Zelizer | Taxing America: Wilbur D. Mills, Congress, and the State, 1945–1975 | Cambridge University Press | |
| 14 | 1999 | Frances E. Lee and Bruce I. Oppenheimer | Sizing Up the Senate: The Unequal Consequences of Equal Representation | The University of Chicago Press | |
| 15 | 2000 | Nancy Beck Young | Wright Patman: Populism, Liberalism, & the American Dream | Southern Methodist University Press | |
| 16 | 2001 | John Aloysius Farrell | Tip O’Neill and the American Century | Little, Brown and Company | |
| 17 | 2002 | Robert Caro | Random House | ||
| 18 | 2003 | Don Oberdorfer | Senator Mansfield: The Extraordinary Life of a Great American Statesman and Diplomat | Smithsonian Books | |
| 19 | 2004 | Michael J. Ybarra | Washington Gone Crazy: Senator Pat McCarran and the Great American Communist Hunt | Steerforth Press | |
| 20 | 2005 | David M. Barrett | The CIA and Congress: The Untold Story from Truman to Kennedy | University Press of Kansas | |
| 21 | 2006 | Congress and the Cold War | Cambridge University Press | ||
| 22 | 2007 | William G. Howell and Jon C. Pevehouse | While Dangers Gather: Congressional Checks on Presidential War Powers | Princeton University Press | |
| 23 | 2008 | Keith Finley | Delaying the Dream: Southern Senators and the Fight against Civil Rights, 1938–1965 | Louisiana State University Press | |
| 24 | 2009 | Frances E. Lee | Beyond Ideology: Politics, Principles, and Partisanship in the U.S. Senate | The University of Chicago Press | |
| 25 | 2013 | Douglas L. Kriner | After the Rubicon: Congress, Presidents, and the Politics of Waging War | The University of Chicago Press | |
| 26 | 2014 | Eric S. Heberlig and Bruce A. Larson | Congressional Parties, Institutional Ambition, and the Financing of Majority Control | The University of Michigan Press | |
| 27 | 2015 | Neil MacNeil and Richard A. Baker | The American Senate: An Insider’s Guide | Oxford University Press | |
| 28 | 2016 | Rebecca U. Thorpe | The American Warfare State: The Domestic Politics of Military Spending | The University of Chicago Press | |
| 29 | 2018 | Julian E. Zelizer | The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society | Penguin Press | |
| 30 | 2019 | Fergus M. Bordewich | The First Congress: How James Madison, George Washington, and a Group of Extraordinary Men Invented the Government | Simon & Schuster | |
| 31 | 2020 | Ruth Bloch Rubin | Building the Bloc: Intraparty Organization in the U.S. Congress | Cambridge University Press | |
| 32 | 2021 | David Bateman, Ira Katznelson and John Lapinski | Southern Nation: Congress and White Supremacy after Reconstruction | Princeton University Press |