The Pulitzer Prize for History, administered by Columbia University, is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It has been presented since 1917 for a distinguished book about the history of the United States. Thus it is one of the original Pulitzers, for the program was inaugurated in 1917 with seven prizes, four of which were awarded that year.[1] The Pulitzer Prize program has also recognized some historical work with its Biography prize, from 1917, and its General Non-Fiction prize, from 1962.
Finalists have been announced since 1980, ordinarily two others beside the winner.
In its first 97 years to 2013, the History Pulitzer was awarded 95 times. Two prizes were given in 1989; none in 1919, 1984, and 1994.
Entries from this point on include the finalists listed after the winner for each year.
| 1980 | Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery | Winner | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Finalist | ||||
| Finalist | ||||
| 1981 | American Education: The National Experience, 1783–1876 | Winner | [11] | |
| Over Here: The First World War and American Society | Finalist | |||
| Finalist | ||||
| 1982 | Mary Chesnut's Civil War | Winner | ||
| White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American & South African History | Finalist | |||
| Power and Culture: The Japanese-American War, 1941–1945 | Finalist | |||
| 1983 | Winner | |||
| Finalist | ||||
| Southern Honor: Ethics & Behavior in the Old South | Finalist | |||
| 1984 | No Award presented | |||
| 1985 | Prophets of Regulation: Charles Francis Adams, Louis D. Brandeis, James M. Landis, Alfred E. Kahn | Winner | ||
| Finalist | ||||
| Finalist | ||||
| 1986 | Winner | |||
| Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work and the Family from Slavery to the Present | Finalist | |||
| Novus Ordo Seclorum: the Intellectual Origins of the Constitution | Finalist | |||
| Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America | Finalist | |||
| 1987 | Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution | Winner | ||
| Eisenhower: At War, 1943–1945 | Finalist | |||
| Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference | Finalist | |||
| 1988 | Winner | |||
| Finalist | ||||
| Finalist | ||||
| 1989 | Winner | |||
| Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era | Winner | |||
| Finalist | ||||
| Finalist | ||||
| 1990 | Winner | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Finalist | ||||
| American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm 1870–1970 | Finalist | |||
| 1991 | Winner | |||
| Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939 | Finalist | |||
| Finalist | ||||
| America in 1857: A Nation on the Brink | Finalist | |||
| 1992 | Winner | |||
| Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West | Finalist | |||
| Finalist | ||||
| Profits in the Wilderness: Entrepreneurship and the Founding of New England Towns in the Seventeenth Century | Finalist | |||
| Finalist | ||||
| 1993 | Winner | |||
| Finalist | ||||
| Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America | Finalist | |||
| 1994 | No award given | |||
| Crime and Punishment in American History | Finalist | |||
| Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK | Finalist | |||
| William Faulkner and Southern History | Finalist | |||
| 1995 | No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II | Winner | ||
| Stories of Scottsboro | Finalist | |||
| Lincoln in American Memory | Finalist | |||
| 1996 | William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic | Winner | ||
| Finalist | ||||
| Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb | Finalist | |||
| 1997 | Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution | Winner | ||
| Finalist | ||||
| Founding Mothers and Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society | Finalist | |||
| 1998 | Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion | Winner | [12] | |
| Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America | Finalist | |||
| Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History | Finalist | |||
| 1999 | and Mike Wallace | Winner | [13] | |
| This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age | Finalist | |||
| In a Barren Land: American Indian Dispossession and Survival | Finalist | |||
| 2000 | Winner | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier | Finalist | |||
| Finalist | ||||
| 2001 | Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation | Winner | [14] | |
| Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War | Finalist | |||
| Finalist | ||||
| 2002 | Winner | |||
| Deep Souths: Delta, Piedmont, and the Sea Island Society in the Age of Segregation | Finalist | |||
| Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America | Finalist | |||
| 2003 | Winner | |||
| At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America | Finalist | |||
| Rereading Sex: Battles Over Sexual Knowledge and Suppression in Nineteenth Century America | Finalist | |||
| 2004 | Winner | |||
| They Marched into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967 | Finalist | |||
| Finalist | ||||
| 2005 | Washington's Crossing | Winner | ||
| Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age | Finalist | |||
| Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810-1860, volumes 1 & 2 | Finalist | |||
| 2006 | Winner | |||
| New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan | Finalist | |||
| Finalist | ||||
| 2007 | and Hank Klibanoff | Winner | ||
| Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa, 1787-2005 | Finalist | |||
| Finalist | ||||
| 2008 | Winner | |||
| Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power | Finalist | |||
| Finalist | ||||
| 2009 | Winner | [15] [16] | ||
| This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War | Finalist | |||
| and Robert Weisbrot | Finalist |
| 2010 | Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World | Winner | [17] | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City | Finalist | |||
| Finalist | ||||
| 2011 | Winner | [18] | ||
| Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South | Finalist | [19] | ||
| Eden on the Charles: The Making of Boston | Finalist | [20] | ||
| 2012 | Winner | [21] [22] | ||
| Empires, Nations & Families: A History of the North American West, 1800-1860 | Finalist | |||
| and Robbyn Swan | Finalist | |||
| Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America | Finalist | |||
| 2013 | Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam | Winner | [23] | |
| Finalist | ||||
| Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History | Finalist | |||
| 2014 | Winner | [24] [25] | ||
| Finalist | ||||
| Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety | Finalist | |||
| 2015 | Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People | Winner | [26] | |
| Empire of Cotton: A Global History | Finalist | |||
| Finalist | ||||
| 2016 | Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America | Winner | [27] | |
| Finalist | ||||
| Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War | Finalist | |||
| Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor | Finalist | |||
| 2017 | Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy | Winner | [28] [29] | |
| Brothers at Arms: American Independence and the Men of France and Spain Who Saved It | Finalist | |||
| New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America | Finalist | |||
| 2018 | Winner | [30] [31] | ||
| Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics | Finalist | |||
| Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots against Hollywood and America | Finalist | |||
| 2019 | Winner | [32] [33] | ||
| Civilizing Torture: An American Tradition | Finalist | |||
| American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic | Finalist |
| 2020 | Winner | [34] [35] [36] | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Finalist | ||||
| Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership | Finalist | |||
| 2021 | Winner | [37] [38] [39] | ||
| Finalist | ||||
| Finalist | ||||
| 2022 | Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America | Winner | [40] [41] [42] | |
| Winner | ||||
| Until Justice Be Done: America's First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction | Finalist | |||
| 2023 | Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power | Winner | [43] [44] | |
| Watergate: A New History | Finalist | |||
| Michael John Witgen | Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America | Finalist | ||
| 2024 | No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston’s Black Workers in the Civil War Era | Winner | [45] [46] | |
| Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion | Finalist | |||
| American Anarchy: The Epic Struggle Between Immigrant Radicals and the US Government at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century | Finalist |
Five people have won the Pulitzer Prize for History twice.