Literary Award – Books

Literary Award – Awardees and Finalists
For information about the award, including how to apply, please click here.
2024 Finalists^

Elizabeth A. Athens
William Bartram's Visual Wonders
University of Pittsburgh Press

Emma Copley Eisenberg
Housemates
Hogarth

Howard Langer
The Last Dekrepitzer
Cresheim Press

Annie Liontas
Sex With a Brain Injury: On Concussion and Recovery
Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC

Liz Moore
The God of the Woods
Riverhead Books

Benjamin Nathans
To the Success of our Hopeless Cause
Princeton University Press

2023 Awardees^

David Amadio
Rug Man
Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books

David S. Barnes
Lazaretto: How Philadelphia Used an Unpopular Quarantine Based on Disputed Science to Accommodate Immigrants and Prevent Epidemics
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press

2023 Finalists^

Ayana Mathis
The Unsettled
Alfred A. Knopf

Ben Stanger
From One Cell
W.W. Norton & Company

Joseph Earl Thomas
Sink: A Memoir
Grand Central Publishing

Steven Ujifusa
The Last Ships from Hamburg
Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

2022 Finalists^

Alice Elliott Dark
Fellowship Point
Simon & Schuster

Jonathan M. Katz
Gangsters of Capitalism
St. Martin’s Press

Michael Meyer
Benjamin Franklin's Last Bet
Mariner Books

2021 Awardees^

Quiara Alegría Hudes
My Broken Language
One World

Miles Orvell
Empire of Ruins: American Culture, Photography, and the Spectacle of Destruction
Oxford University Press

2021 Finalists^

Cordelia Frances Biddle
Biddle, Jackson, and a Nation in Turmoil
Oxford Southern, an imprint of Sunbury Press, Inc.

Kareem Rosser
Crossing the Line
St. Martin's Press

Anthony R. Wood
Snow: A History of the World’s Most Fascinating Flake
Prometheus Books

2020 Awardees^

Lynn Miller and Therese Dolan
Salut!: France Meets Philadelphia
Temple University Press

Michele Harper
The Beauty in Breaking
Riverhead Books

2020 Finalists^

Susan Abulhawa
Against the Loveless World
Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Kiley Reid
Such a Fun Age: A Novel
G.P. Putnam's Sons

2018 Awardees^

Madeline Miller
Circe: A Novel
Little, Brown and Company

Patrick Spero
Frontier Rebels: The Fight for Independence in the American West, 1765-1776
W.W. Norton & Company

2017 Awardees^

Erica Armstrong Dunbar
Never Caught: the Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave Ona Judge
37 Ink/Atria

Carol Eaton Soltis
The Art of the Peales in the Philadelphia Museum of Art: Adaptations and Innovations
Philadelphia Museum of Art, in association with Yale University Press

2016 Awardees^

Gino Segrè and Bettina Hoerlin
The Pope of Physics: Enrico Fermi and the Birth of the Atomic Age
Henry Holt and Company

Judith Stein
Eye of the Sixties: Richard Bellamy and the Transformation of Modern Art
Farrar, Straus and Giroux

2015 Awardees^

David Grazian
American Zoo: A Sociological Safari
Princeton University Press

Barbara Miller Lane
Houses for a New World: Builders and Buyers in American Suburbs
Princeton University Press

2013 Awardees^

Adrian Raine
The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime
Pantheon Books

George H. Marcus and William Whitaker
The Houses of Louis Kahn
Yale University Press

2011 - no award^

2007 Awardee^

Jon Clinch
Finn: A Novel
Random House

2005 Awardee^

Kermit Roosevelt
In the Shadow of the Law
Farrar, Straus and Giroux

2004 Awardee^

Roger W. Moss
Historic Sacred Places of Philadelphia
University of Pennsylvania Press

2003 Awardee^

Jack Repcheck
The Man Who Found Time
Perseus

2002 Awardees^

Jane Golden, Robin Rice & Monica Yant Kinney
Philadelphia Murals and the Stories They Tell
Temple University Press

Charlene Mires
Independence Hall in American Memory
University of Pennsylvania Press

2001 - no award^

2000 Awardees^

Susan Sidlauskas
Body, Place, and Self in Nineteenth-Century Painting
Cambridge University Press

Patricia Tyson Stroud
The Emperor of Nature; Charles-Lucien Bonaparte and His World
University of Pennsylvania Press

George E. Thomas
William L. Price: Arts and Crafts to Modern Design
Princeton Architectural Press

Ben Yagoda
About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made
Scribner

1999 Awardees^

J. Welles Henderson and Rodney P. Carlisle
Marine Art & Antiques: Jack Tar ; A Sailor's Life 1750-1910
Antique Collectors' Club

Witold Rybczynski
A Clearing In The Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the Nineteenth Century
Scribner

Jonathan Weiner
Time, Love, Memory: A Great Biologist and his Quest for the Origins of Behavior
Alfred A. Knopf : Distributed by Random House

1998 Awardees^

James J. O'Donnell
Avatars of the Word: From Papyrus to Cyberspace
Harvard University Press

Leonard Warren
Joseph Leidy: The Last Man Who Knew Everything
Yale University Press

1997 Awardees^

A.C. Elias, Jr. (editor)
Memoirs of Laetitia Pilkington
University of Georgia Press

Kathleen A. Foster and Kenneth Finkel
Captain Watson's Travels in America: The Sketchbooks and Diary of Joshua Rowley Watson, 1772-1818
University of Pennsylvania Press

David P. Silverman (general editor)
Ancient Egypt
Oxford University Press

David P. Silverman (editor)
Searching for Ancient Egypt: Art, Architecture, and Artifacts from the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
Dallas Museum of Art, University of Pennsylvania Museum, Cornell University Press

Mary Walton
Car: A Drama of the American Workplace
W. W. Norton

1996 Awardees^

Peter Conn
Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Biography
Cambridge University Press

Diane McKinney-Whetstone
Tumbling
William Morrow and Company, Inc.

1995 Awardees^

Thomas Childers
Wings of Morning: The Story of the Last American Bomber Shot Down Over Germany in World War II
Addison-Wesley Pub. Co.

Witold Rybczynski
City Life: Urban Expectations in a New World
Scribner

Susan Stewart
The Forest
University of Chicago Press

1993 Awardees^

Susan Q. Stranahan
Susquehanna, River of Dreams
Johns Hopkins University Press

Seymour I. Toll
A Judge Uncommon: A Life of John Biggs, Jr.
Legal Communications

1992 Awardee^

Arthur Power Dudden
The American Pacific: From the Old China Trade to the Present
Oxford University Press

1990 Awardees^

Paul Halpern
Time Journeys: A Search for Cosmic Destiny and Meaning
McGraw-Hill

Matthews Masayuki Hamabata
Crested Kimono: Power and Love in the Japanese Business Family
Cornell University Press

Ora Mendels
A Taste for Treason: A Novel
Carol Pub. Group

Camille Paglia
Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson
Yale University Press

1989 Awardees^

Coral Lansbury
The Grotto
Knopf

James Snyder
Medieval Art: Painting-Sculpture-Architecture, 4th-14th Century
Prentice-Hall , H.N. Abrams

Emily W. Sunstein
Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality
Little, Brown

1988 Awardees^

Marilyn Gaull
English Romanticism: The Human Context
W. W. Norton

Barbara Holland
The Name of the Cat
Dodd, Mead

John Allen Paulos
Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences
Hill and Wang

1987 - no award^

1986 Awardees^

David Eisenhower
Eisenhower at War, 1943-1945
Random House

Julie Nixon Eisenhower
Pat Nixon: The Untold Story
Simon and Schuster

Michael Malone
Handling Sin: A Novel
Little, Brown

Barry Schwartz
The Battle for Human Nature: Science, Morality, and Modern Life
Norton

1984 Awardees^

Roland Mushat Frye
The Renaissance Hamlet: Issues and Responses in 1600
Princeton University Press

Jean Gordon Lee
Philadelphians and the China Trade, 1784-1844
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Philip Chadwick Foster Smith
The Empress of China
Philadelphia Maritime Museum

1983 Awardees^

Gerald Carson
The Dentist and the Empress: The Adventures of Dr. Tom Evans in Gas-Lit Paris
Houghton Mifflin Company

Helen Hartman Gemmill
E. L., The Bread Box Papers: A Biography of Elizabeth Chapman Lawrence
Dorrance , Bucks County Historical Society

Edgar P. Richardson
Charles Willson Peale and His World
H. N. Abrams

1982 Awardees^

Susan Gray Detweiler
George Washington's Chinaware
Abrams

Desmond Ryan
Deadlines: A Novel
Norton

Jean Seder
Voices of Kensington: Vanishing Mills : Vanishing Neighborhoods
Whitmore Publishing Co.

Seymour Shubin
The Captain: A Novel
Stein & Day

David R. Slavitt
Ringer
Dutton

1981 Awardees^

David Bradley
The Chaneysville Incident: A Novel
Harper & Row, Publishers

Daniel Hoffman
Brotherly Love
Vintage Books a division of Random House

John Lukacs
Philadelphia, Patricians & Philistines, 1900-1950
Farrar, Straus, Giroux

Russell F. Weigley
Eisenhower's Lieutenants: The Campaign of France and Germany, 1944-1945
Indiana University Press

1980 Awardees^

Lois G. Forer
Criminals and Victims: A Trial Judge Reflects on Crime and Punishment
Norton

James C. Humes
Churchill: Speaker of the Century
Stein and Day

Arthur R. G. Solmssen
A Princess in Berlin: A Novel
Little, Brown

1979 Awardees^

E. Digby Baltzell
Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia: Two Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Class Authority and Leadership
Free Press

Richard J. Boyle
John Twachtman
Watson Guptill

Dorothy Shipley White
Black Africa and De Gaulle: From the French Empire to Independence
Pennsylvania State University Press

1978 Awardees^

Peggy Anderson
Nurse
St. Martin's Press

Elizabeth Gray Vining
Being Seventy: The Measure of a Year
Viking Press

Anthony F. C. Wallace
Rockdale: The Growth of an American Village in the Early Industrial Revolution
Knopf

Jan Westcott
A Woman of Quality
Putnam

1976 - no award^

1974 Awardee^

John R. Coleman
Blue-Collar Journal: A College President's Sabbatical
Lippincott

1973 Awardee^

John Maass
The Glorious Enterprise: the Centennial Exhibition of 1876 and H. J. Schwarzmann, Architect-in-Chief
Published for the Institute for the Study of Universal History Through Arts and Artifacts, by the American Life Foundation

1971 Awardee^

Loren Eiseley
The Night Country
Scribner

1970 - no award^

1969 Awardees^

Henry Clarence Pitz
The Brandywine Tradition
Houghton Mifflin

Chaim Potok
The Promise
Knopf

1968 Awardees^

Ernest Penney Earnest
Expatriates and Patriots: American Artists, Scholars, and Writers in Europe
Duke University Press

Robert Chester Smith
The Art of Portugal: 1500-1800
Weidenfeld & Nicolson

1967 Awardees^

Edmund N. Bacon
Design of Cities
Viking Press

Daniel P. Mannix
The Fox and the Hound
Dutton

1966 Awardee^

Edward S. Gifford, Jr.
Father Against the Devil
Doubleday

1965 Awardee^

Laurence Davis Lafore
The Long Fuse: An Interpretation of the Origins of World War I
Weidenfeld and Nicolson

1964 Awardees^

Kristin Hunter
God Bless the Child
Charles Scribner's Sons

Elizabeth Gray Vining
Take Heed of Loving Me
Lippincott

Dorothy Shipley White
Seeds of Discord: De Gaulle, Free France, and the Allies
Syracuse University Press

1963 Awardees^

Daniel Hoffman
The City of Satisfactions
Oxford University Press

Samuel Noah Kramer
The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character
The University of Chicago Press

1961 Awardees^

Roy F. Nichols
The Stakes of Power, 1845-1877
Hill and Wang

Lauren R. Stevens
The Double Axe
Scribner

1960 Awardees^

David Taylor
Storm the Last Rampart
J. B. Lippincott Co.

Edwin Wolf II
Rosenbach: A Biography
World Pub. Co.

1959 Awardee^

John Canaday
Mainstreams of Modern Art
Simon and Schuster

1958 Awardees^

L. Sprague DeCamp
An Elephant for Aristotle
Doubleday

Loren C. Eiseley
Darwin's Century: Evolution and the Men Who Discovered It
Doubleday

1957 Awardees^

Catherine Drinker Bowen
The Lion and the Throne: The Life and Times of Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634)
Little, Brown

Bettina Linn
A Letter to Elizabeth
Lippincott

1956 Awardees^

Livingston L. Biddle Jr.
The Village Beyond
Lippincott

Samuel Noah Kramer
From the Tablets of Summer: 25 Firsts in Man's Recorded History
Falcon's Wing Press

1955 Awardee^

Conyers Read
Mr. Secretary Cecil and Queen Elizabeth
Knopf

1954 Awardee^

Davis Grubb
The Night of the Hunter
Harper & Brothers

1951 Awardee^

Arthur Hobson Quinn
The Literature of the American People: An Historical and Critical Survey
Appleton-Century-Crofts

1949 Awardee^

John L. Lamonte
The World of the Middle Ages
Appleton-Century-Crofts

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