The Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize

See also: Recent Awards | Book of the Year Citations | The Virginia and Warren Stone Prize

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
2022	Rosewood: Endangered Species Conservation and the Rise of Global China	Annah Lake Zhu
	No prize was awarded in 2021.
2020	The Education Trap: Schools and the Remaking of Inequality in Boston	Cristina Viviana Groeger (Co-Winner)
	Tata: The Global Corporation That Built Indian Capitalism	Mircea Raianu (Co-Winner)
2019	Spies and Scholars: Chinese Secrets and Imperial Russia’s Quest for World Power	Gregory Afinogenov (Co-Winner)
	The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution	Lindsay M. Chervinsky (Co-Winner)
2018	The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges Are Failing Disadvantaged Students	Anthony Abraham Jack
2017	Winner: The Second Creation: Fixing the American Constitution in the Founding Era	Jonathan Gienapp
	Honorable Mention: Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America, by Kathleen Belew • The Limits of Blame: Rethinking Punishment and Responsibility, by Erin I. Kelly • The Art of Being: Poetics of the Novel and Existentialist Philosophy, by Yi-Ping Ong • Elements of Surprise: Our Mental Limits and the Satisfactions of Plot, by Vera Tobin
2016	The Republic of Arabic Letters: Islam and the European Enlightenment	Alexander Bevilacqua
2015	From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America	Elizabeth Hinton (Co-Winner)
	The Lyric in the Age of the Brain	Nikki Skillman (Co-Winner)
2014	After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate	Mary Ziegler
2013	Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United	Zephyr Teachout
2012	Marching into Darkness: The Wehrmacht and the Holocaust in Belarus	Waitman Wade Beorn
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)
	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)
	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, With a New Preface	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	The 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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