Presidents Book Award
Submissions are now open.
A $1000 prize is awarded annually for a meritorious first work by an early-career scholar. Entrants are judged on scholarly significance, interdisciplinary reach, and methodological innovativeness within monographs analyzing past structures and events and change over time. Books with a copyright date of 2025 that are published within eight years of the author’s Ph.D. are eligible for consideration.
Submission Deadline: Submissions with a postmark of August 15 (or earlier) will be accepted. Late entries will not be considered.
Authors or publishers wishing to nominate a book should mail print copies to each member of the award committee. Electronic (PDF, linked, emailed) copies will not be considered. Please be sure to email the committee members to let them know that the nominated books have been sent or to get any additional information for the addresses.
Award Committee
Julia Adams (Chair), Yale University
Email: julia.adams@yale.edu
Address:
Department of Sociology
493 College Street
Yale University
New Haven, CT 06511
Sophie Salvo, University of Chicago
Email: ssalvo@uchicago.edu
Address:
Department of Germanic Studies
University of Chicago
1010 East 59th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
United States
Yiching Wu, University of Toronto
Email: yiching.wu@utoronto.ca
Address:
32A Saunders Road
Toronto, ON M1J 3H9
Canada
2025 President’s Book Award Winner
Sophie Salvo
Articulating Difference: Sex and Language in the German Nineteenth Century
University of Chicago Press
(2024)
2025 Honorable Mentions
Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky
Empire of Refugees: North Caucasian Muslims and the Late Ottoman State
Stanford University Press (2024)
Kevin P. Donovan
Money, Value, and the State: Sovereignty and Citizenship in East Africa
Cambridge University Press (2024)
Past Winners
2025
Sophie Salvo – University of Chicago
Articulating Difference: Sex and Language in the German Nineteenth Century
2024
Lachlan McNamee – University of California, Los Angeles
Settling for Less: Why States Colonize and Why They Stop
2023
Robyn d’Avignon – New York University
A Ritual Geology: Gold and Subterranean Knowledge in Savanna West Africa
2022
No Award Given
2021
No Award Given
2020
James Poskett – University of Warwick
Materials of the Mind: Phrenology, Race, and the Global History of Science, 1815-1920
2019
Seth Archer – Utah State University
Sharks upon the Land: Colonialism, Indigenous Health, and Culture in Hawai’i, 1778–1855
2018
Keri Leigh Merritt – Independent Scholar
Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South
2018
Taisu Zhang – Yale University
The Laws and Economics of Confucianism: Kinship and Property in Preindustrial China and England
2017
William Rankin – Yale University
After the Map: Cartography, Navigation, and the Transformation of Territory in the Twentieth Century
2016
Jonathan Wyrtzen – Yale University
Making Morocco: Colonial Intervention and the Politics of Identity
2015
Aaron Panofsky – University of Chicago
Misbehaving Science: Controversy and the Development of Behavior Genetics
2014
Vanessa Ogle – University of Pennsylvania
Contesting Time: The Global Struggle for Uniformity and Its Unintended Consequences, 1870s-1950s
2013
Yiching Wu – University of Toronto
The Cultural Revolution at the Margins: Chinese Socialism in Crisis
2012
Lisa Stampniktzky – Harvard University
Disciplining Terror: How Experts Invented Terrorism
2011
Elizabeth Popp Berman – University of California, Berkeley
Creating the Market University
2010
Ho-fung Hung – Johns Hopkins University
Protests with Chinese Characteristics
2009
Greta Krippner – University of Michigan
Capitalizing on Crisis
2008
Anthony Chen – Northwestern University
The Fifth Freedom
2007
Brodwyn Fischer – University of Chicago
For our Poverty of Rights
2007
Issac Martin – University of California, Berkeley
In Defense of Privilege
2006
Sarah Igo – Vanderbilt University
The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens and the Making of a Mass Public
2005
Joseph Gerteis – University of Minnesota
Class and the Color Line
2004
Steven Pfaff – University of Washington
Exit-Voice Dynamics and the Collapse of East Germany: The Crisis of Leninism and the Revolution of 1989
2003
Geoff Cunfe – University of Saskatchewan
On the Great Plains: Agriculture and Environment
2002
Robert D. Johnson – Yale University
The Radical Middle Class
2001
Stephen M. Striffler – University of Arkansas
In the Shadow of State and Capital
2000
Mark S. Weiner – Yale University
Americans Without Law
1999
Daniel Lord Smail – Fordham University
Imaginary Cartographies: Possession and Identity in Late Medieval Marseille
1998
Robert Freeland – Stanford University
The Struggle for Control of the Modern Corporation
1997
Robert Lieberman – Columbia University
Shifting the Color Line: Race and the American Welfare State
1996
Thomas Sugrue – University of Pennsylvania
The Origins of the Urban Crisis
1995
Leslie J. Reagan – University of Illinois
When Abortion Was a Crime
1994
Mary E. Odem – Emory University
Delinquent Daughters
1993
Mauro F. Guillen – MIT
Models of Management
1992
Stewart Tolnay – University at Albany
Festival of Violence
1991
1990
Richard Maddox – Augustana College
El Castillo: The Politics of Tradition in an Andalusian Town
1989
No Award Given
1988
Gary A. Abraham – St. Bonaventure University
Max Weber and the Jewish Question