Established in 1984, this award is offered annually to recognize distinguished contributions to public history during the previous 10 years. The prize is named in memory of Herbert Feis (1893–1972), public servant and historian of recent American foreign policy, with an initial endowment from the Rockefeller Foundation. The prize was originally given for books produced by historians working outside of academe. In 2006, the scope of the award was changed to emphasize significant contributions in the field of public history.

2023
Adam Clulow, Univ. of Texas at Austin

2022
Nicholas Breyfogle, Ohio State Univ.

2021
Theodore Karamanski, Loyola Univ. Chicago

2020
Valerie Paley, Center for Women’s History, New-York Historical Society

2019
Sonia Hernandez, Trinidad Gonzales, John Morán González, Benjamin Johnson, and Monica Muñoz Martinez for the Refusing to Forget project

2018
Joan Neuberger, Univ. of Texas at Austin

2017
Lonnie Bunch, Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture

2016
Yolanda Leyva, Univ. of Texas at El Paso

2015
Pamela Henson, Smithsonian Institution Archives

2014
Naomi Oreskes, Harvard Univ.

2013
Richard Turley, Jr., assistant church historian of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

2012
Richard Rabinowitz, founding president of American History Workshop

2011
Alfred Goldberg, former director of the Historical Office of the Office of the Secretary of Defense

2010
Heather Huyck, Coll. of William and Mary

2009
Noel Stowe, Arizona State Univ.

2008
Richard Kohn, Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

2007
David DeVorkin, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution

2006
Victoria Harden, National Institutes of Health, retired

2005
Mark Landsman, Dictatorship and Demand: The Politics of Consumerism in East Germany (Harvard Univ. Press)

2004
Jonathan Martin, Divided Mastery, Slave Hiring in the American South (Harvard Univ. Press)

2003
Julia Sweig, Inside the Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro and the Urban Underground (Harvard Univ. Press)

2002
Pamela Grundy, Learning to Win: Sports, Education, and Social Change in 20th-Century North Carolina (Univ. of North Carolina Press)

2001
Benjamin Filene, Romancing the Folk: Public Memory and American Roots Music (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press)

2000
George Perkovich, India's Nuclear Bomb: The Impact on Global Proliferation (Univ. of California Press)

1999
Rachel Maines, The Technology of Orgasm: 'Hysteria,' the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press)

1998
Ann Vileisis, Discovering the Unknown Landscape: A History of America's Wetlands (Island Press)

1997
D. Michael Quinn, Same-Sex Dynamics among 19th-Century Americans: A Mormon Example (Univ. of Illinois Press)

1996
David Conroy, In Public Houses: Drink and the Revolution of Authority in Colonial Massachusetts (Univ. of North Carolina Press)

1995
Mark Wetherington, The New South Comes to Wiregrass Georgia, 1860-1910 (Univ. of Tennessee Press)

1994
Liza Dalby, Kimono: Fashioning Culture (Yale Univ. Press)

1993
Edward Cohen, Athenian Economy and Society: A Banking Perspective (Princeton Univ. Press)
Edith Gelles, Portia: The World of Abigail Adams (Indiana Univ. Press)

1992
James Smith, The Idea Brokers: Think Tanks and the Rise of the New Policy Elite (Free Press)

1991
Burnett Bolloten, Spanish Civil War: Revolution and Counterrevolution, 1936-39 (Univ. of North Carolina Press)

1990
Theodore Draper, A Present of Things Past: Selected Essays (Hill and Wang)

1989
Marc Miller, The Irony of Victory: World War II and Lowell, Massachusetts (Univ. of Illinois Press)

1988
Larry Tise, Proslavery: A History of the Defense of Slavery in America, 1701-1840 (Univ. of Georgia Press)

1987
Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore (Alfred A. Knopf)

1986
Thomas Doerflinger, A Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise: Merchants and Economic Development in Revolutionary Philadelphia (Univ. of North Carolina Press for the Inst. of Early American History and Culture)

1985
Pete Daniel, Breaking the Land: The Transformation of Cotton, Tobacco, and Rice Cultures since 1880 (Univ. of Illinois Press)

1984
Albert Cowdrey, This Land, This South: An Environmental History (Univ. Press of Kentucky)