Finalist: Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor, by James M. Scott (W.W. Norton & Company)
A spellbinding narrative that uses Chinese, Russian and Japanese sources to expand the story of the first American attack on Japan during World War II.
Winners
Prize Winner in History in 2016:
T.J. Stiles
A rich and surprising new telling of the journey of the iconic American soldier whose death turns out not to have been the main point of his life. (Moved by the Board from the Biography category.)
History
Finalists
Nominated as finalists in History in 2016:
Annie Jacobsen
A brilliantly researched account of a small but powerful secret government agency whose military research profoundly affects world affairs.
Brian Matthew Jordan
A history exposing mental and physical infirmities that beset Civil War veterans, maladies that echo in the experiences of many veterans today.
The Jury
The Jury
Andrés Reséndez(Chair)
Professor of History
Linda Gordon
University Professor of the Humanities and Florence Kelley Professor of History
Hank Klibanoff*
James M. Cox Jr. Professor of Journalism and Director of the Journalism Program
Winners in History
Elizabeth A. Fenn
An engrossing, original narrative showing the Mandans, a Native American tribe in the Dakotas, as a people with a history.
Alan Taylor
A meticulous and insightful account of why runaway slaves in the colonial era were drawn to the British side as potential liberators.
Fredrik Logevall
A balanced, deeply researched history of how, as French colonial rule faltered, a succession of American leaders moved step by step down a road toward full-blown war.
Manning Marable
An exploration of the legendary life and provocative views of one of the most significant African-Americans in U.S. history, a work that separates fact from fiction and blends the heroic and tragic.
2016 Prize Winners
William Finnegan
A finely crafted memoir of a youthful obsession that has propelled the author through a distinguished writing career.
T.J. Stiles
A rich and surprising new telling of the journey of the iconic American soldier whose death turns out not to have been the main point of his life. (Moved by the Board from the Biography category.)
Peter Balakian
Poems that bear witness to the old losses and tragedies that undergird a global age of danger and uncertainty.
Viet Thanh Nguyen
A layered immigrant tale told in the wry, confessional voice of a "man of two minds" -- and two countries, Vietnam and the United States.