ShelfEvidentPulitzer Prize for History
2025 Winner
2025 Shortlist & Longlist
Shortlist
Shortlist
Complete History
2020s
- 2025Native Nations: A Millennium in North America — Kathleen DuVal
- 2024No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston's Black Workers in the Civil War Era — Jacqueline Jones
- 2023Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power — Jefferson Cowie
- 2022Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America — Nicole Eustace
- 2021Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America — Marcia Chatelain
- 2020Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America — W. Caleb McDaniel
2010s
- 2019Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom — David W. Blight
- 2018The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea — Jack E. Davis
- 2017Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy — Heather Ann Thompson
- 2016Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America — T.J. Stiles
- 2015Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People — Elizabeth Fenn
- 2014The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832 — Alan Taylor
- 2013Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam — Fredrik Logevall
- 2012Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention — Manning Marable
- 2011The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery — Eric Foner
- 2010Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World — Liaquat Ahamed
2000s
- 2009The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family — Annette Gordon-Reed
- 2008What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 — Daniel Walker Howe
- 2007The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation — Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff
- 2006Polio: An American Story — David Oshinsky
- 2005Washington's Crossing — David Hackett Fischer
- 2004A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration — Steven Hahn
- 2003An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942–1943 — Rick Atkinson
- 2002The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America — Louis Menand
- 2001Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation — Joseph J. Ellis
- 2000Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War — David M. Kennedy
1990s
- 1999Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 — Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace
- 1998Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion — Edward J. Larson
- 1997Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution — Jack N. Rakove
- 1996William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic — Alan Taylor
- 1995No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II — Doris Kearns Goodwin
- 1993The Radicalism of the American Revolution — Gordon S. Wood
- 1992The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties — Mark E. Neely, Jr.
- 1991A Midwife's Tale — Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
- 1990In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines — Stanley Karnow
1980s
- 1989Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-1963 — Taylor Branch
- 1988The Launching of Modern American Science, 1846–1876 — Robert V. Bruce
- 1987Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution — Bernard Bailyn
- 1986...the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age — Walter A. McDougall
- 1985Prophets of Regulation: Charles Francis Adams, Louis D. Brandeis, James M. Landis, Alfred E. Kahn — Thomas K. McCraw
- 1983The Transformation of Virginia, 1740–1790 — Rhys L. Isaac
- 1982Mary Chesnut's Civil War — C. Vann Woodward
- 1981American Education: The National Experience, 1783–1876 — Lawrence A. Cremin
- 1980Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery — Leon F. Litwack
1970s
- 1979The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics — Don E. Fehrenbacher
- 1978The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business — Alfred D. Chandler, Jr.
- 1977The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861 — David M. Potter (Completed and edited by Don E. Fehrenbacher)
- 1976Lamy of Santa Fe — Paul Horgan
- 1975Jefferson and His Time — Dumas Malone
- 1974The Americans: The Democratic Experience — Daniel J. Boorstin
- 1973People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization — Michael Kammen
- 1972Neither Black nor White: Slavery and Race Relations in Brazil and the United States — Carl N. Degler
- 1971Roosevelt: The Soldier Of Freedom — James MacGregor Burns
- 1970Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department — Dean Acheson
1960s
- 1969Origins of the Fifth Amendment: The Right Against Self-Incrimination — Leonard W. Levy
- 1968The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution — Bernard Bailyn
- 1967Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West — William H. Goetzmann
- 1966The Life of the Mind in America — Perry Miller
- 1965The Greenback Era: A Social and Political History of American Finance, 1865–1879 — Irwin Unger
- 1964Puritan Village: The Formation of a New England Town — Sumner Chilton Powell
- 1963Washington: Village and Capital, 1800–1878 — Constance McLaughlin Green
- 1962The Triumphant Empire: Thunder-Clouds Gather in the West, 1763–1766 — Lawrence H. Gipson
- 1961Between War and Peace: The Potsdam Conference — Herbert Feis
- 1960In the Days of McKinley — Margaret Leech
1950s
- 1959The Republican Era: 1869–1901 — Leonard D. White and Jean Schneider
- 1958Banks and Politics in America — Bray Hammond
- 1957Russia Leaves the War: Soviet-American Relations, 1917–1920 — George F. Kennan
- 1956The Age of Reform — Richard Hofstadter
- 1955Great River: The Rio Grande in North American History — Paul Horgan
- 1954A Stillness at Appomattox — Bruce Catton
- 1953The Era of Good Feelings — George Dangerfield
- 1952The Uprooted — Oscar Handlin
- 1951The Old Northwest, Pioneer Period 1815–1840 — R. Carlyle Buley
- 1950Art and Life in America — Oliver W. Larkin
1940s
- 1949The Disruption of American Democracy — Roy Franklin Nichols
- 1948Across the Wide Missouri — Bernard DeVoto
- 1947Scientists Against Time — James Phinney Baxter III
- 1946The Age of Jackson — Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
- 1945Unfinished Business — Stephen Bonsal
- 1944The Growth of American Thought — Merle Curti
- 1943Paul Revere and the World He Lived In — Esther Forbes
- 1942Reveille in Washington, 1860–1865 — Margaret Leech
- 1941The Atlantic Migration, 1607–1860 — Marcus Lee Hansen
- 1940Abraham Lincoln: The War Years — Carl Sandburg
1930s
- 1939A History of American Magazines — Frank Luther Mott
- 1938The Road to Reunion, 1865–1900 — Paul Herman Buck
- 1937The Flowering of New England, 1815–1865 — Van Wyck Brooks
- 1936A Constitutional History of the United States — Andrew C. McLaughlin
- 1935The Colonial Period of American History — Charles McLean Andrews
- 1934The People's Choice — Herbert Agar
- 1933The Significance of Sections in American History — Frederick Jackson Turner
- 1932My Experiences in the World War — John J. Pershing
- 1931The Coming of the War, 1914 — Bernadotte E. Schmitt
- 1930The War of Independence — Claude H. Van Tyne
1920s
- 1929The Organization and Administration of the Union Army, 1861–1865 — Fred Albert Shannon
- 1928Main Currents in American Thought — Vernon Louis Parrington
- 1927Pinckney's Treaty — Samuel Flagg Bemis
- 1926A History of the United States, Vol. VI: The War for Southern Independence (1849–1865) — Edward Channing
- 1925History of the American Frontier — Frederic L. Paxson
- 1924The American Revolution: A Constitutional Interpretation — Charles Howard McIlwain
- 1923The Supreme Court in United States History — Charles Warren
- 1922The Founding of New England — James Truslow Adams
- 1921The Victory at Sea — William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick
- 1920The War with Mexico — Justin H. Smith
About the Pulitzer Prize for History
The Pulitzer Prize for History is awarded annually for a distinguished and appropriately documented book on the history of the United States. It is one of the oldest Pulitzer categories, having been awarded since 1917, and is administered by Columbia University. The prize carries a cash award of $15,000 and a certificate. Among the most storied of American literary prizes, it has recognized landmark works by historians including Bernard Bailyn, David McCullough, Alan Taylor, and Annette Gordon-Reed. The prize is specifically for books about American history, distinguishing it from more general history prizes. It is announced each spring following deliberation by a jury of distinguished historians and the Pulitzer Board. The award was not given in 1919, 1984, and 1994. In some years — notably 1989 and 2022 — two prizes have been awarded. Finalists, typically two, are announced alongside the winner. The prize has increasingly recognized works that expand the definition of American history to include previously marginalized voices and perspectives, as seen in recent winners on Indigenous history, the history of slavery, and the Black freedom struggle.
Frequently Asked Questions
- The prize is for distinguished, appropriately documented books on the history of the United States, published during the preceding calendar year by an American author.
- Winners receive $15,000 and a certificate. Finalists receive certificates.
- Yes. In 1989 and 2022, two prizes were awarded. In 2025, two prizes were also given.
- The prize is specifically for American authors writing on American history. Non-American authors are not eligible.
- Five historians have won twice: Margaret Leech, Bernard Bailyn, Paul Horgan, Alan Taylor, and Don E. Fehrenbacher.
- Winners are announced each spring, typically in May.
- No. The prize covers the full sweep of American history, from the colonial period to the present, including social, political, cultural, and military history.