Henry Adams Prize

For more information about the Society for History in the Federal Government, sponsor of this prize, click here.

2018     The INS on the line : making immigration law on the US-Mexico border, 1917-1954 by S. Deborah Kang.
2017     Defenseless under the night : the Roosevelt years and the origins of Homeland Security by Matthew Dallek
2016     The war on alcohol : Prohibition and the rise of the American state by Lisa McGirr
2015     On democracy's doorstep : the inside story of how the Supreme Court brought "one person, one vote" to the United States by J. Douglas Smith
2014     Wilson by A. Scott Berg
2013     Seward : Lincoln's indispensable man by Walter Stahr
2012     The Monitor boys : the crew of the Union's first ironclad by John V. Quarstein
2011     Roosevelt's purge : how FDR fought to change the Democratic Party by Susan Dunn
2010     Vietnam : the history of an unwinnable war, 1945–1975 by John Prados
2009     Old world, new world : Great Britain and America from the beginning by Kathleen Burk
2008     Lincoln’s rise to the presidency by William C. Harris
2007     Thomas Paine : enlightenment, revolution, and the birth of modern nations by Craig Nelson
2006     The interpreter by Alice Kaplan
2004     Goldberger's war : the life and work of a public health crusader by Alan Kraut; American empire :  Roosevelt's geographer and the prelude to globalization by Neil Smith
2003     An army at dawn : the war in North Africa, 1942-1943 by Rick Atkinson (Co-Winner); Harry Truman and civil rights : moral courage and political risks by Michael R. Gardner (Co-Winner)
2002     A river running west : the life of John Wesley Powell by Donald Worster
2001     Creating the secret state : the origins of the Central Intelligence Agency, 1943-1947 by David F. Rudgers
2000     Warmaking and American democracy : the struggle over military strategy, 1700 to the present by Michael D. Pearlman
1999     Building the national parks : historic landscape design and construction by Linda Flint McCelland
1998     Argonne National Laboratory, 1946-1996 by Jack M. Holl, Richard G. Hewlett, and Ruth R. Harris
1997     Explicit and authentic acts : amending the U.S. Constitution, 1776-1995 by David E. Kyvig; Beyond the broker state : federal policies toward small business, 1936-1961 by Jonathan J. Bean
1996     Shaping the Eighteenth Amendment : temperance reform, legal culture, and the polity, 1880-1920 by Richard F. Hamm
1995     Structures in the stream : water, science, and the rise of the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers by Todd A. Shallat
1994     Inside NASA : high technology and organizational change in the U.S. space program by Howard E. McCurdy
1993     The medical department : medical service in the European theater of operations by Graham A. Cosmas and Albert E. Cowdrey
1992     Press gallery : Congress and the Washington correspondents by Donald A. Ritchie
1991     Rocky Mountain spotted fever : history of a twentieth-century disease by Victoria Angela Harden
1990     Atoms for peace and war, 1953-1961 : Eisenhower and the Atomic Energy Commission by Richard G. Hewlett and Jack M. Holl; Public affairs : the military and the media, 1962-1968 by William M. Hammond (Honorable Mention)
1989     The Senate, 1789-1989 : addresses on the history of the United States Senate by Robert C. Byrd
1988     Forging the atomic shield : excerpts from the office diary of Gordon E. Dean by Roger M. Anders; Aviation in the U.S. Army, 1919-1939 by Maurer Maurer (Honorable Mention)
1987     A machine that would go of itself : the Constitution in American culture by Michael G. Kammen
1986     Prelude to the total force : the Air National Guard, 1943-1969 by Charles Joseph Gross
1985     History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense : volume 1: the formative years, 1947-1950 by Steven L. Rearden
1984     A patron for pure science : the National Science Foundation's formative years, 1945-57 by J. Merton England