The purpose of the award is to recognize and encourage distinguished research and writing by scholars of American foreign relations. The prize of $2,500 is awarded annually to an author for his or her first book on any aspect of the history of American foreign relations.
Eligibility
The prize is to be awarded for a first book (including all previously authored or co-authored books but excluding edited volumes). The book must be a history of international relations. Biographies of statesmen and diplomats are eligible. General surveys, autobiographies, editions of essays and documents, and works that represent social science disciplines other than history are not eligible.
Procedures
Books may be nominated by the author, the publisher, or any member of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. A nominating letter explaining why the book deserves consideration must accompany each entry in the competition. Books will be judged primarily in regard to their contributions to scholarship. Winning books should have exceptional interpretative and analytical qualities. They should demonstrate mastery of primary material and relevant secondary works, and they should display careful organization and distinguished writing. Five copies of each book must be submitted according to the procedure laid out below along with a letter of nomination. The award will be announced during the SHAFR annual conference. The prize will be divided only when two superior books are so evenly matched that any other decision seems unsatisfactory to the selection committee. The committee will not award the prize if there is no book in the competition that meets the standards of excellence established for the prize.
Submission Procedures
To nominate a book for the prize, please follow the submission guidelines outlined below.
Step 1: Letter of Nomination
Email a letter of nomination to Tessa Winkelmann.
Step 2: Book Copies
Send a copy of the book being nominated to each of the committee members and special collections established by the deed of gift for this prize listed below.
Deadline
Books may be sent anytime but must arrive by March 15, 2026.
Mailing Destinations for Committee members and special collections
Tessa Winkelmann Department of History University of Nevada, Las Vegas 4505 S. Maryland Parkway, Box 455020 Las Vegas, NV 89154-5020
Benjamin Coates Department of History Wake Forest University Winston Salem, NC 27109-6251
Stuart Schraeder Johns Hopkins University Department of History, 301 Gilman Hall 3400 N. Charles Street Baltimore, MD 21218
2026Emilie Connolly, Vested Interests: Trusteeship and Native Dispossession in the United States
2025Christina Cecelia Davidson, Dominican Crossroads: H. C. C. Astwood and the Moral Politics of Race Making in the Age of Emancipation
2024Sheyda Jahanbani, The Poverty of the World: Rediscovering the Poor at Home and Abroad, 1941-1968
2023Nicholas Mulder, The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War
2022Roberto Saba, American Mirror: The United States and Brazil in the Age of Emancipation
2021Stefen J. Link, Forging Global Fordism: Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and the Contest over the Industrial Order
2020Monica Kim, The Interrogation Rooms of the Korean War: The Untold History
The 2010s
2019Megan Black, The Global Interior: Mineral Frontiers and American Power
2018Tore Olsson, Agrarian Crossings: Reformers and the Remaking of the US and Mexican Countryside
2017Matthew Karp, This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy
2016Nancy Kwak, A World of Homeowners: American Power and the Politics of Housing Aid
2015Adam Ewing, The Age of Garvey: How a Jamaican Activist Created a Mass Movement and Changed Global Black Politics
2014Andrew Friedman, Covert Capital: Landscapes of Denial and the Making of the U.S. Empire in the Suburbs of Northern Virginia
2013Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, Hanoi’s War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam
2012Sarah Snyder, Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War: A Transnational History of the Helsinki Network
2011David Ekbladh, The Great American Mission: Modernization and the Construction of an American World Order
2010Marc Selverstone, Constructing the Monolith: The United States, Great Britain, and International Communism, 1945–1950
The 2000s
2009Jason Parker, Brother's Keeper: The United States, Race, and Empire in the British Caribbean, 1937-1962
2008Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism
2007Paul A. Kramer, The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, & the Philippines.
2006Seth Jacobs, America's Miracle Man in Vietnam: Ngo Dinh Diem, Religion, Race, and U.S. Intervention in Southeast Asia, 1950-1957; Elizabeth Borgwardt, A New Deal for the World: America's Vision for Human Rights
2005Christopher Endy, Cold War Holidays: American Tourism in France
2004David Engerman, Modernization from the Other Shore: American Intellectuals and the Romance of Russian Development
2003Matthew Connelly, A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria's Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era
2002Mary Renda, Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism, 1915-1940
2001Joseph Henning, Outposts of Civilization: Race, Religion, and the Formative Years of American-Japanese Relations; Gregory Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin: America's Strategy to Subvert the Soviet Bloc, 1947-1956
2000Jessica Gienow-Hecht, Transmission Impossible: American Journalism as Cultural Diplomacy in Postwar Germany, 1945-1955; Fredrik Logevall, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam
The 1990s
1999Eric Roorda, The Dictator Next Door: The Good Neighbor Policy and the Trujillo Regime in the Dominican Republic, 1930-1945; Kurkpatrick Dorsey, The Dawn of Conservation Diplomacy: U.S.-Canadian Wildlife Protection Treaties in the Progressive Era
1998Penny Von Eschen, Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937-1957
1997Carolyn Eisenberg, Drawing the Line: The American Decision to Divide Germany, 1944-1949
1996Robert Buzzanco, Masters of War: Military Dissent and Politics in the Vietnam Era
1995Reinhold Wagnleitner, Coca-colonization and the Cold War: The Cultural Mission of the United States in Austria after the Second World War; James Hershberg, James B. Conant: Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Age
1994Tim Borstelmann, Apartheid's Reluctant Uncle: The United States and Southern Africa in the Early Cold War
1993Elizabeth Cobbs, The Rich Neighbor Policy: Rockefeller and Kaiser in Brazil
1992Thomas Schwartz, America's Germany: John J. McCloy and the Federal Republic of Germany
1991Gordon Chang, Friends and Enemies: The United States, China, and the Soviet Union, 1948-1972
1990Walter Hixson, George F. Kennan: Cold War Iconoclast; Anders Stephanson, Kennan and the Art of Foreign Policy
