The AHA is pleased to announce that Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, University of New Hampshire; and Lizabeth Cohen, Carnegie Mellon University, were awarded the 1991 Bancroft Prizes. Cohen received the prize for her book, Making A New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–39, published by Cambridge University Press. Ulrich also received a Bancroft Prize and in addition a Pulitzer Prize in history for her book, A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785–1812, published by Alfred A. Knopf.

Professor Ulrich's work also garnered accolades at this past December's AHA annual meeting where she was awarded two AHA book prizes: the Joan Kelly Memorial Prize in Women's History and the John H. Dunning Prize for outstanding historical writing in United States history.

Her book is praised for its imaginative use of the "minutiae regularly recorded in Martha Ballard's diary to construct an intricate mosaic of life on the Maine frontier." The Kelly Prize Committee also commended Ulrich's interpretation of data which "discloses the operation of a female economy, reveals the importance of the midwife in the life of a rural community, and provides insight into gender roles and relationships."