The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations is pleased to award the 2020 Robert Ferrell Book Prize to Daniel Immerwahr for his book How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 

The committee—headed by Susan Carruthers and including Nancy Mitchell, Paul Thomas Chamberlain, and Jussi Hanhimaki—commended Immerwahr’s bold remapping of U.S. history. By directing readers’ attention to those non-contiguous territories variously claimed for, and kept attenuated from, the United States, Immerwahr artfully makes peripheries central to the story of U.S. imperialism--and empire central to hitherto truncated national narratives. How to Hide an Empire is ambitiously conceived and deeply researched, drawing on impressive original research. Its author has mined archives in Manila, Alaska, and Hawaii as well as the National Archives, various presidential libraries and an array of other repositories. Immerwahr’s prose is striking for its accessibility, directness, and verve. How to Hide an Empires is an immersive and gripping read. The author not only makes U.S. history “greater” again, he does so in a way that speaks compellingly to diverse audiences. The book has already won the attention and admiration of critics and readers within and beyond academia. Immerwahr thus does more than make a provocative case that we must expand the boundaries of national cartography. He provides a model for scholars who strive to extend the reach and resonance of our field.