Looking for books to put on my ad hoc list of top history books, for giving or getting, I took at look at the list of Pulitzer Prize winners in the history category, a list of books that dates back to 1917. (You may make nominations for the list here — please do!) Prizes for the past dozen or so years are all books I liked and have found useful. Some of the books, like Acheson’s winner from 1970, grew to be classics in some circles. But I was struck by how many of the books seem to have sunk from view.
Where are they now?
Here’s the Pulitzer website for the prize itself, where you can find lists for all the prizes; I reproduce the complete list of winners in history, below the fold.
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| 1917 | With Americans of Past and Present Days by His Excellency J.J. Jusserand, Ambassador of France to the United States (Scribner) | |
| 1918 | A History of the Civil War, 1861-1865 by James Ford Rhodes (Macmillan) | |
| 1919 | (No Award) | |
| 1920 | The War with Mexico, 2 vols. by Justin H. Smith (Macmillan) | |
| 1921 | The Victory at Sea by William Sowden Sims in collaboration with Burton J. Hendrick (Doubleday) | |
| 1922 | The Founding of New England by James Truslow Adams (Little) | |
| 1923 | The Supreme Court in United States History by Charles Warren (Little) | |
| 1924 | The American Revolution — A Constitutional Interpretation by Charles Howard McIlwain (Macmillan) | |
| 1925 | History of the American Frontier by Frederic L. Paxson (Houghton) | |
| 1926 | A History of the United States by Edward Channing (Macmillan) | |
| 1927 | Pinckney’s Treaty by Samuel Flagg Bemis (Johns Hopkins) | |
| 1928 | Main Currents in American Thought, 2 vols. by Vernon Louis Parrington (Harcourt) | |
| 1929 | The Organization and Administration of the Union Army, 1861-1865 by Fred Albert Shannon (A.H. Clark) | |
| 1930 | The War of Independence by Claude H. Van Tyne (Houghton) | |
| 1931 | The Coming of the War 1914 by Bernadotte E. Schmitt (Scribner) | |
| 1932 | My Experiences in the World War by John J. Pershing (Stokes) | |
| 1933 | The Significance of Sections in American History by Frederick J. Turner (Holt) | |
| 1934 | The People’s Choice by Herbert Agar (Houghton) | |
| 1935 | The Colonial Period of American History by Charles McLean Andrews (Yale Univ. Press) | |
| 1936 | A Constitutional History of the United States by Andrew C. McLaughlin (Appleton) | |
| 1937 | The Flowering of New England 1815-1865 by Van Wyck Brooks (Dutton) | |
| 1938 | The Road to Reunion, 1865-1900 by Paul Herman Buck (Little) | |
| 1939 | A History of American Magazines by Frank Luther Mott (Harvard Univ. Press) | |
| 1940 | Abraham Lincoln: The War Years by Carl Sandburg (Harcourt) | |
| 1941 | The Atlantic Migration, 1607-1860 by Marcus Lee Hansen (Harvard Univ. Press) | |
| 1942 | Reveille in Washington, 1860-1865 by Margaret Leech (Harper) | |
| 1943 | Paul Revere and the World He Lived In by Esther Forbes (Houghton) | |
| 1944 | The Growth of American Thought by Merle Curti (Harper) | |
| 1945 | Unfinished Business by Stephen Bonsal (Doubleday) | |
| 1946 | The Age of Jackson by Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr. (Little) | |
| 1947 | Scientists Against Time by James Phinney Baxter 3rd (Little) | |
| 1948 | Across the Wide Missouri by Bernard Devoto (Houghton) | |
| 1949 | The Disruption of American Democracy by Roy Franklin Nichols (Macmillan) | |
| 1950 | Art and Life in America by Oliver W. Larkin (Rinehart) | |
| 1951 | The Old Northwest, Pioneer Period 1815-1840 by R. Carlyle Buley (Towers, Inc.) | |
| 1952 | The Uprooted by Oscar Handlin (Little) | |
| 1953 | The Era of Good Feelings by George Dangerfield (Harcourt) | |
| 1954 | A Stillness at Appomattox by Bruce Catton (Doubleday) | |
| 1955 | Great River: The Rio Grande in North American History by Paul Horgan (Rinehart) | |
| 1956 | The Age of Reform by Richard Hofstadter (Knopf) | |
| 1957 | Russia Leaves the War: Soviet-American Relations, 1917-192O by George F. Kennan (Princeton Univ. Press) | |
| 1958 | Banks and Politics in America by Bray Hammond (Princeton Univ. Press) | |
| 1959 | The Republican Era: l869-1901 by Leonard D. White, with the assistance of Miss Jean Schneider (Macmillan) | |
| 1960 | In the Days of McKinley by Margaret Leech (Harper) | |
| 1961 | Between War and Peace: The Potsdam Conference by Herbert Feis (Princeton Univ. Press) | |
| 1962 | The Triumphant Empire: Thunder-Clouds Gather in the West 1763-1766 by Lawrence H. Gipson (Knopf) | |
| 1963 | Washington, Village and Capital, 1800-1878 by Constance McLaughlin Green (Princeton Univ. Press) | |
| 1964 | Puritan Village: The Formation of a New England Town by Sumner Chilton Powell (Wesleyan Univ. Press) | |
| 1965 | The Greenback Era by Irwin Unger (Princeton Univ. Press) | |
| 1966 | The Life of the Mind in America by the late Perry Miller (Harcourt) | |
| 1967 | Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West by William H. Goetzmann (Knopf) | |
| 1968 | The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution by Bernard Bailyn (Harvard Univ. Press) | |
| 1969 | Origins of the Fifth Amendment by Leonard W. Levy (Oxford Univ. Press) | |
| 1970 | Present At The Creation: My Years In The State Department by Dean Acheson (Norton) | |
| 1971 | Roosevelt: The Soldier Of Freedom by James MacGregor Burns (Harcourt) | |
| 1972 | Neither Black Nor White by Carl N. Degler (Macmillan) | |
| 1973 | People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization by Michael Kammen (Knopf) | |
| 1974 | The Americans: The Democratic Experience by Daniel J. Boorstin (Random) | |
| 1975 | Jefferson and His Time, Vols. I-V by Dumas Malone (Little) | |
| 1976 | Lamy of Santa Fe by Paul Horgan (Farrar) | |
| 1977 | The Impending Crisis, 1841-1867 by David M. Potter (Harper), a posthumous publication. Manuscript finished by Don E. Fehrenbacher | |
| 1978 | The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business by Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. (Harvard Univ. Press) | |
| 1979 | The Dred Scott Case by Don E. Fehrenbacher (Oxford Univ. Press) | |
| 1980 | Been in the Storm So Long by Leon F. Litwack (Knopf) | |
| 1981 | American Education: The National Experience, 1783-1876 by Lawrence A. Cremin (Harper & Row) | |
| 1982 | Mary Chesnut’s Civil War (Yale U. Press) by edited by C. Vann Woodward | |
| 1983 | The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790 by Rhys L. Isaac (U. North Carolina Press) | |
| 1984 | (No Award) | |
| 1985 | Prophets of Regulation by Thomas K. McCraw (Belknap/Harvard) | |
| 1986 | …the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age by Walter A. McDougall (Basic Books) | |
| 1987 | Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution by Bernard Bailyn (Alfred A. Knopf) | |
| 1988 | The Launching of Modern American Science 1846-1876 by Robert V. Bruce (Alfred A. Knopf) | |
| 1989 | Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James M. McPherson (Oxford University Press) | |
| 1989 | Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-1963 by Taylor Branch (Simon and Schuster) | |
| 1990 | In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines by Stanley Karnow (Random House) | |
| 1991 | A Midwife’s Tale by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (Alfred A. Knopf) | |
| 1992 | The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties by Mark E. Neely, Jr. (Oxford University Press) | |
| 1993 | The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon S. Wood (Alfred A. Knopf) | |
| 1994 | (No Award) | |
| 1995 | No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II by Doris Kearns Goodwin (Simon & Schuster) | |
| 1996 | William Cooper’s Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic by Alan Taylor (Alfred A. Knopf) | |
| 1997 | Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution by Jack N. Rakove (Alfred A. Knopf) | |
| 1998 | Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion by Edward J. Larson (BasicBooks) | |
| 1999 | Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace (Oxford University Press) | |
| 2000 | Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 by David M. Kennedy (Oxford University Press | |
| 2001 | Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation by Joseph J. Ellis (Alfred A. Knopf) | |
| 2002 | The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America by Louis Menand (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) | |
| 2003 | An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943 by Rick Atkinson (Henry Holt and Company) | |
| 2004 | A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration by Steven Hahn (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press) | |
| 2005 | Washington’s Crossing by David Hackett Fischer (Oxford University Press) | |
| 2006 | Polio: An American Story by David M. Oshinsky (Oxford University Press) | |
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 