George Washington Prize Finalists 2019

Benjamin Rush: the Visionary Doctor Who Became a Founding Father

Stephen Fried | Fall 2019 - George Washington Prize Books

Rush was a visionary writer and reformer, a confidant to John Adams, Washington's surgeon general, and opponent of slavery and prejudice, yet he's not a well-known founding father.

Excerpted from the George Washington Book Prize finalist Rush: Revolution, M

The Young George Washington

Peter Stark | Fall 2019 - George Washington Prize Books

Ambitious, temperamental, and passionate, George Washington learned the skills in the French and Indian War that laid the groundwork for the great leader that he would become.

Excerpted from the George Washington Book Prize finalist Young Washington: H

Revolution Song

Russell Shorto | Fall 2019 - George Washington Prize Books

The American War for Independence was part of an international trend -- a new focus on the individual that inspired people to new insights, new proclamations, and new assertions of rights.

Excerpted from the George Washington Book Prize finalist Revolution Song: A

The Battle that Led to Victory at Yorktown

Nathaniel Philbrick | Fall 2019 - George Washington Prize Books

Largely overlooked in histories of the Revolution, the Battle of the Chesapeake is in fact one of the most important naval engagements in history, leading to the American victory at Yorktown.

Excerpted from the George Washington Book Prize finalist In the Hurricane's Eye: The Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown

The Tragedy of Benedict Arnold

Joyce Lee Malcolm | Fall 2019 - George Washington Prize Books

While Arnold is a villain in the eyes of most Americans, he was considered the most brilliant officer on either side of the Revolutionary War. Why would he commit a crime so inexcusable?

Excerpted from the George Washington Book Prize finalist The Tragedy of Bene

Jefferson’s Daughters

Catherine Kerrison | Fall 2019 - George Washington Prize Books

Jefferson had children with his wife, Martha, and then with his and slave, Sally Hemings, and these children lived very different lives as a result of their race.

Excerpted from the George Washington Book Prize finalist Jefferson's Daughters:

The Indian World of George Washington

Colin G. Calloway | Fall 2019 - George Washington Prize Books

Native American peoples and the lands they possessed loomed large for Washington, from his first trips westward as a surveyor to his years as president.

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Featured Authors

Acheson, Dean

Dean Acheson (1893-1971) was an attorney and statesman who served as Secretary of State from 1949 to 1953 under President Harry Truman. A key architect of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, Acheson stressed the importance of multilateral organizations in the fight against totalitarianism. Prior to his service in the Truman Administration, Acheson clerked for Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, worked at Washington law firm Covington & Burling, and served as Undersecretary of the Treasury for one year under President Franklin Roosevelt.

Ambrose, Stephen E.

Stephen E. Ambrose (1936-2002) was a historian and professor who wrote on military history, presidential history, and American expansion and foreign policy. Ambrose has been praised for his biographies of Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon, and for helping to galvanize interest in World War II.

Becker, Elizabeth

Elizabeth Becker is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books. Her history When The War Was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge won accolades from the Robert F. Kennedy book award, while her recent biography of female conflict journalists You Don’t Belong Here: How Three Women Rewrote the Story of War won the 2022 Sperber Book Prize and Harvard’s Goldsmith Book Prize. She is also the author of America’s Vietnam War: A Narrative History for young adults.

Bird, Kai

Kai Bird is a historian and Executive Director of Leon Levy Center for Biography at the City University of New York. He is best known for writing about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Vietnam War, US-Middle East relations and biographies of political figures. Bird is the author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize, and The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames, a New York Times bestseller. His most recent book is The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter.

Blight, David W.

David W. Blight is the Class of 1954 Professor of American History and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance & Abolition at Yale University. Recently, Blight has written A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Narratives of Emancipation, and Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, which won the Bancroft Prize, the Abraham Lincoln Prize, and the Frederick Douglass Prize.