Pulitzer Prize for History — Complete Winners List

107 years of winners · Pulitzer Prize Board, Columbia University · Since 1917 · ← Back to award page

Year	Title	Author	Publisher
2026	We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution	Jill Lepore	Liveright
2025	Native Nations: A Millennium in North America	Kathleen DuVal	Random House
2024	No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston's Black Workers in the Civil War Era	Jacqueline Jones	Basic Books
2023	Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power	Jefferson Cowie	Basic Books
2022	Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America	Nicole Eustace	Liveright Publishing
2021	Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America	Marcia Chatelain	Liveright Publishing
2020	Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America	W. Caleb McDaniel	Oxford University Press
2019	Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom	David W. Blight	Simon & Schuster
2018	The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea	Jack E. Davis	Liveright Publishing
2017	Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy	Heather Ann Thompson	Pantheon Books
2016	Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America	T.J. Stiles	Alfred A. Knopf
2015	Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People	Elizabeth Fenn	Hill and Wang
2014	The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832	Alan Taylor	W. W. Norton & Company
2013	Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam	Fredrik Logevall	Random House
2012	Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention	Manning Marable	Viking
2011	The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery	Eric Foner	W. W. Norton & Company
2010	Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World	Liaquat Ahamed	Penguin Press
2009	The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family	Annette Gordon-Reed	—
2008	What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848	Daniel Walker Howe	—
2007	The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation	Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff	—
2006	Polio: An American Story	David Oshinsky	—
2005	Washington's Crossing	David Hackett Fischer	—
2004	A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration	Steven Hahn	—
2003	An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942–1943	Rick Atkinson	—
2002	The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America	Louis Menand	—
2001	Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation	Joseph J. Ellis	—
2000	Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War	David M. Kennedy	—
1999	Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898	Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace	—
1998	Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion	Edward J. Larson	—
1997	Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution	Jack N. Rakove	—
1996	William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic	Alan Taylor	—
1995	No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II	Doris Kearns Goodwin	—
1993	The Radicalism of the American Revolution	Gordon S. Wood	—
1992	The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties	Mark E. Neely, Jr.	—
1991	A Midwife's Tale	Laurel Thatcher Ulrich	—
1990	In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines	Stanley Karnow	—
1989	Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-1963	Taylor Branch	—
1988	The Launching of Modern American Science, 1846–1876	Robert V. Bruce	—
1987	Voyagers 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	—
1985	Prophets of Regulation: Charles Francis Adams, Louis D. Brandeis, James M. Landis, Alfred E. Kahn	Thomas K. McCraw	—
1983	The Transformation of Virginia, 1740–1790	Rhys L. Isaac	—
1982	Mary Chesnut's Civil War	C. Vann Woodward	—
1981	American Education: The National Experience, 1783–1876	Lawrence A. Cremin	—
1980	Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery	Leon F. Litwack	—
1979	The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics	Don E. Fehrenbacher	—
1978	The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business	Alfred D. Chandler, Jr.	—
1977	The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861	David M. Potter (Completed and edited by Don E. Fehrenbacher)	—
1976	Lamy of Santa Fe	Paul Horgan	—
1975	Jefferson and His Time	Dumas Malone	—
1974	The Americans: The Democratic Experience	Daniel J. Boorstin	—
1973	People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization	Michael Kammen	—
1972	Neither Black nor White: Slavery and Race Relations in Brazil and the United States	Carl N. Degler	—
1971	Roosevelt: The Soldier Of Freedom	James MacGregor Burns	—
1970	Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department	Dean Acheson	—
1969	Origins of the Fifth Amendment: The Right Against Self-Incrimination	Leonard W. Levy	—
1968	The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution	Bernard Bailyn	—
1967	Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West	William H. Goetzmann	—
1966	The Life of the Mind in America	Perry Miller	—
1965	The Greenback Era: A Social and Political History of American Finance, 1865–1879	Irwin Unger	—
1964	Puritan Village: The Formation of a New England Town	Sumner Chilton Powell	—
1963	Washington: Village and Capital, 1800–1878	Constance McLaughlin Green	—
1962	The Triumphant Empire: Thunder-Clouds Gather in the West, 1763–1766	Lawrence H. Gipson	—
1961	Between War and Peace: The Potsdam Conference	Herbert Feis	—
1960	In the Days of McKinley	Margaret Leech	—
1959	The Republican Era: 1869–1901	Leonard D. White and Jean Schneider	—
1958	Banks and Politics in America	Bray Hammond	—
1957	Russia Leaves the War: Soviet-American Relations, 1917–1920	George F. Kennan	—
1956	The Age of Reform	Richard Hofstadter	—
1955	Great River: The Rio Grande in North American History	Paul Horgan	—
1954	A Stillness at Appomattox	Bruce Catton	—
1953	The Era of Good Feelings	George Dangerfield	—
1952	The Uprooted	Oscar Handlin	—
1951	The Old Northwest, Pioneer Period 1815–1840	R. Carlyle Buley	—
1950	Art and Life in America	Oliver W. Larkin	—
1949	The Disruption of American Democracy	Roy Franklin Nichols	—
1948	Across the Wide Missouri	Bernard DeVoto	—
1947	Scientists Against Time	James Phinney Baxter III	—
1946	The Age of Jackson	Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.	—
1945	Unfinished Business	Stephen Bonsal	—
1944	The Growth of American Thought	Merle Curti	—
1943	Paul Revere and the World He Lived In	Esther Forbes	—
1942	Reveille in Washington, 1860–1865	Margaret Leech	—
1941	The Atlantic Migration, 1607–1860	Marcus Lee Hansen	—
1940	Abraham Lincoln: The War Years	Carl Sandburg	—
1939	A History of American Magazines	Frank Luther Mott	—
1938	The Road to Reunion, 1865–1900	Paul Herman Buck	—
1937	The Flowering of New England, 1815–1865	Van Wyck Brooks	—
1936	A Constitutional History of the United States	Andrew C. McLaughlin	—
1935	The Colonial Period of American History	Charles McLean Andrews	—
1934	The People's Choice	Herbert Agar	—
1933	The Significance of Sections in American History	Frederick Jackson Turner	—
1932	My Experiences in the World War	John J. Pershing	—
1931	The Coming of the War, 1914	Bernadotte E. Schmitt	—
1930	The War of Independence	Claude H. Van Tyne	—
1929	The Organization and Administration of the Union Army, 1861–1865	Fred Albert Shannon	—
1928	Main Currents in American Thought	Vernon Louis Parrington	—
1927	Pinckney's Treaty	Samuel Flagg Bemis	—
1926	A History of the United States, Vol. VI: The War for Southern Independence (1849–1865)	Edward Channing	—
1925	History of the American Frontier	Frederic L. Paxson	—
1924	The American Revolution: A Constitutional Interpretation	Charles Howard McIlwain	—
1923	The Supreme Court in United States History	Charles Warren	—
1922	The Founding of New England	James Truslow Adams	—
1921	The Victory at Sea	William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick	—
1920	The War with Mexico	Justin H. Smith	—
1918	A History of the Civil War, 1861-1865	James Ford Rhodes	—
1917	With Americans of Past and Present Days	Jean Jules Jusserand	—