The Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize

See also: Recent Awards | Book of the Year Citations

The Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize honors the memory of Thomas J. Wilson, director of Harvard University Press from 1947 to 1967. It is awarded to an author’s first book manuscript, approved for publication by the Board of Syndics of Harvard University Press in a given calendar year, that is judged outstanding in content, style, and mode of presentation.

The author’s mastery of his or her field of interest and ability to fit his or her special contribution into some major problem in that field are a determining factor in the award of the prize. Eligible books are judged in terms of effective achievement of the author’s purpose.

Year Title Author
2011 Righteous Republic: The Political Foundations of Modern India Ananya Vajpeyi
2010 Worlds of Dissent: Charter 77, The Plastic People of the Universe, and Czech Culture under Communism Jonathan Bolton
2009 So Great a Proffit: How the East Indies Trade Transformed Anglo-American Capitalism James R. Fichter
2008 The Dialectic of Counter-Enlightenment Christian Thorne (Co-Winner)
2008 Settler Sovereignty: Jurisdiction and Indigenous People in America and Australia, 1788–1836 Lisa Ford (Co-Winner)
2006 Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America Matthew Avery Sutton
2005 A Most Amazing Scene of Wonders: Electricity and Enlightenment in Early America James Delbourgo
2004 Saving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and Judgment Bryan Garsten
2003 Born Losers: A History of Failure in America Scott A. Sandage
2002 To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City Martha Biondi
2001 The Accidental Republic: Crippled Workingmen, Destitute Widows, and the Remaking of American Law John Fabian Witt
2000 Who Owns Academic Work? Battling for Control of Intellectual Property Corynne McSherry
1999 The Uses of Variety: Modern Americanism and the Quest for National Distinctiveness Carrie Tirado Bramen (Co-Winner)
1999 Joseph Schumpeter’s Two Theories of Democracy John Medearis (Co-Winner)
1998 Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market Walter Johnson
1997 Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe Brad S. Gregory
1996 Shifting the Color Line: Race and the American Welfare State Robert C. Lieberman
1995 Ghost Dancing the Law: The Wounded Knee Trials John William Sayer
1994 Nietzsche: The Ethics of an Immoralist Peter Berkowitz
1993 Narrative Ethics Adam Newton
1992 The Invention of the Restaurant: Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture Rebecca L. Spang
1991 Orthodoxies in Massachusetts: Rereading American Puritanism Janice Knight
1990 Deciding to Decide: Agenda Setting in the United States Supreme Court H.W. Perry, Jr.
1989 The First Amendment, Democracy, and Romance Steven Shiffrin
1988 Unruly Eloquence: Lucian and the Comedy of Traditions Bracht Branham
1987 Francis Bacon and the Rhetoric of Nature John C. Briggs
1986 Law and Social Change in Postwar Japan Frank K. Upham
1985 The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte Frederick C. Beiser
1984 The Self as Mind: Vision and Identity in Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats Charles J. Rzepka
1983 Shakespeare and the Hazards of Ambition Robert N. Watson
1982 Lenin Lives! The Lenin Cult in Soviet Russia Nina Tumarkin
1981 The Puritan Moment: The Coming of Revolution in an English County William Hunt
1980 The Creative Imagination: Enlightenment to Romanticism James Engell
1979 The Intellectual Resistance in Europe James D. Wilkinson
1978 The Politics of Landscape: Rural Scenery and Society in English Poetry, 1630–1660 James G. Turner
1977 The Healthy Body and Victorian Culture Bruce Haley
1976 The Transformation of American Law, 1780–1860 Morton J. Horwitz
1975 The Wild Boy of Aveyron Harlan Lane
1974 Browning’s Youth John Maynard
1973 Seventh Hero: Thomas Carlyle and the Theory of Radical Activism Philip Rosenberg
1972 Experience and Artistic Expression in Lope de Vega: The Making of La Dorotea Alan S. Trueblood
1971 Six Existential Heroes: The Politics of Faith Lucio P. Ruotolo
1970 The Kurbskii–Groznyi Apocrypha: The 17th-Century Genesis of the “Correspondence” Attributed to Prince A.M. Kurbskii and Tsar Ivan IV Edward L. Keenan

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