The AHA Prize in American History was created in 1927 by a bequest from Miss Mathilda M. Dunning, stipulating that a prize in American history be established in honor of her father, John H. Dunning. This biennial prize was first awarded in 1929, and has been awarded in odd-numbered years since 1991. The prize name was changed in 2023. It is offered for the best first book or scholarly equivalent on any subject pertaining to the history of the United States.

2023
Kathryn Olivarius, Necropolis: Disease, Power, and Capitalism in the Cotton Kingdom (Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press)

2021
Bathsheba Demuth, Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait (W.W. Norton)

2019
Christina N. Snyder, Great Crossings: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in the Age of Jackson (Oxford Univ. Press)

2017
Matthew Karp, This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy (Harvard Univ. Press)

2015
Kate Brown, Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters (Oxford Univ. Press)

2013
Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas (Univ. of Chicago Press)

2011
Darren Dochuk, From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism (W. W. Norton)

2009
Peggy Pascoe, What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America (Oxford Univ. Press)

2007
Linda Nash, Inescapable Ecologies: A History of Environment, Disease, and Knowledge (Univ. of California Press)

2005
Jon Coleman, Vicious: Wolves and Men in America (Yale Univ. Press)

2003
Michael Willrich, City of Courts: Socializing Justice in Progressive Era Chicago. (Cambridge Univ. Press)

2001
Ernest Freeberg, The Education of Laura Bridgman: First Deaf and Blind Person to Learn Language. (Harvard Univ. Press)

1999
Marilyn Baseler, Asylum for Mankind: America, 1607-1800 (Cornell Univ. Press)

1997
Kathleen Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia (Univ. of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Inst. of Early American History and Culture)

1995
Daniel Vickers, Farmers and Fishermen: Two Centuries of Work in Essex County, Massachusetts, 1630-1850 (Univ. of North Carolina Press for the Inst. of Early American History and Culture)

1993
A. Gregg Roeber, Palatines, Liberty, and Property: German Lutherans in Colonial British America (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press)
Daniel Usner, Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Before 1783 (Univ. of North Carolina Press)

1991
Eric Arnesen, Waterfront Worker of New Orleans: Race, Class, and Politics, 1863-1923 (Oxford Univ. Press)

1990
Laurel Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 (Alfred A. Knopf)

1989
Drew McCoy, The Last of the Fathers: James Madison and the Republican Legacy (Cambridge Univ. Press)

1988
Joseph Stevens, Hoover Dam: An American Adventure (Univ. of Oklahoma Press)

1987
Allan Kulikoff, Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680-1800 (Univ. of North Carolina Press)

1986
Barbara Fields, Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland during the 19th Century (Yale Univ. Press)

1984
Nick Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist (Univ. of Illinois Press)

1982
David Jeremy, Transatlantic Industrial Revolution: The Diffusion of Textile Technologies between Britain and America, 1770-1830s (Massachusetts Inst. of Technology Press)

1980
John Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across: The Overland Emigrants and the TransMississippi West, 1840-60 (Univ. of Illinois Press)

1978
J. Mills Thornton, III, Politics and Power in a Slave Society: Alabama, 1800-1861 (Louisiana State Univ. Press)

1976
Thomas Hines, Burnham of Chicago: Architect and Planner (Oxford Univ. Press)

1974
Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft (Harvard Univ. Press)

1972
John Diggins, Mussolini and Fascism: The View from America (Princeton Univ. Press)

1970
Gordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (Univ. of North Carolina Press for the Inst. of Early American History and Culture)

1968
Robert Beisner, Twelve Against Empire: The Anti-Imperialists, 1898-1900 (McGraw)

1966
John Shy, Toward Lexington: The Role of the British Army in the American Revolution (Princeton Univ. Press)

1964
John Cox and LaWanda Cox, Politics, Principle, and Prejudice, 1865-66 (Free Press of Glencoe)

1962
E. James Ferguson, The Power of the Purse: A History of American Public Finance, 1776-90 (Univ. of North Carolina Press, for the Inst. of Early American History and Culture)

1960
Eric McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (Univ. of Chicago Press)

1958
Marvin Meyers, The Jacksonian Persuasion (Stanford Univ. Press)

1956
John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism (Rutgers Univ. Press)

1954
Gerald Carson, The Old Country Store (Oxford Univ. Press)

1952
Louis Hunter and Beatrice Hunter, Steamboats on the Western Rivers: An Economic and Technological History (Harvard Univ. Press)

1950
Henry Smith, Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (Harvard Univ. Press)

1948
William Livezey, Mahan on Sea Power (Univ. of Oklahoma Press)

1946
David Ellis, Landlords and Farmers in the Hudson Mohawk Region (Cornell Univ. Press)

1944
Elting Morison, Admiral Sims and the Modern American Navy (Houghton)

1942
Oscar Handlin, Boston's Immigrants (Harvard Univ. Press)

1940
Richard Leopold, Robert Dale Owen (Harvard Univ. Press)

1938
Robert East, Business Enterprise in the American Revolutionary Era (Columbia Univ. Press)

1935
Angie Debo, The Rise and Fall of the Choctaw Republic (Univ. of Oklahoma Press)

1933
Amos Ettinger, The Mission to Spain of Pierre Soule (Yale Univ. Press)

1931
Francis Simkins and Robert Woody, South Carolina During Reconstruction (Univ. of North Carolina Press)

1929
Haywood Pearce, Jr., Benjamin H. Hill: Secession and Reconstruction (Univ. of Chicago Press)