George Washington Prize Finalists 2020

Martha Saxton | Fall 2020 George Washington Prize

Denigrated as "crude," "illiterate," "self-centered," and "slovenly," Mary Washington had the singular destiny to have a son whose potential for being idealized seems to have been even greater than that for motherhood.

Excerpted from the George Washington Book Prize finalist The Widow Washington: The Life of Mary Washington, by Martha Saxton (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).

A Crisis of Peace

David Head | Fall 2020 George Washington Prize

At the end of the War for Independence, Philadelphia nationalists, together with disgruntled officers in the Continental Army at Newburgh, began a plot to challenge congress' authority. But can we really call it a conspiracy?

Excerpted from the George Washington Book Prize finalist A Crisis of Peace: George Washington, the Newburgh Conspiracy, and the Fate of the American Revolution, by David Head (Pegasus Books).

In A World of Trouble

Richard Godbeer | Fall 2020 George Washington Prize

The British are often cast as the tyrannical power in the Revolutionary War. But American patriots could also be ruthless in demanding fealty to their cause, as many Quaker families learned while attempting to remain neutral.

Excerpted from the George Washington Book Prize finalist World of Trouble: A Philadelphia Quaker Family’s Journey through the American Revolution, by Richard Godbeer (Yale University Press).

Heirs of an Honored Name

Douglas R. Egerton | Fall 2020 George Washington Prize

After his father's death in 1848, Charles Francis Adams, Sr. became the last great hope of America's first—and, at the time, only—political dynasty.

Excerpted from the George Washington Book Prize finalist Heirs of an Honored Name: The Decline of the Adams Family and the Rise of Modern America, by Douglas R. Egerton (Basic Books).

Property of the Nation: Washington's Tomb

Matthew R. Costello | Fall 2020 George Washington Prize

Following Washington's death in 1799, cultural and intellectual agents in early America began to transform the first president into a national symbol through books, poems, and artwork.

Excerpted from the George Washington Book Prize finalist The Property of the

Stolen into Slavery

Richard Bell | Fall 2020 George Washington Prize

While the Underground Railroad helped enslaved black people escape north, another version ran in reverse, sending free men, women, and children back into bondage.

Excerpted from the George Washington Book Prize finalist Stolen: Five Free B

The British Are Coming

Rick Atkinson | Fall 2020 George Washington Prize

When rebellion broke out in the American colonies, British royals—including King George III and Lord Frederick North—moved quickly. Their actions would change the course of history.

Excerpted from the George Washington Book Prize winner The British Are Comin

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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.