1994 Awards for Scholarly Distinction

In 1984 the Council of the AHA established the American Historical Association Award for Scholarly Distinction. Each year a committee composed of former AHA presidents recommends to the Council up to three names for the award, and the Council then selects up to three names from the list presented. Nominees are senior historians of the highest distinction in the historical profession who have spent the bulk of their professional careers in the United States. Previous ~wards have gone to Nettie Lee Benson, Woodrow Borah, Angie Debo, Helen G. Edmonds, Felix Gilbert, John W. Hall, Margaret Atwood Judson, Paul Oskar Kristeller, Gerhart B. Ladner, Gerda Lerner, Edmund Morgan, Benjamin Quarles, Edwin O. Reischauer, Caroline Robbins, Carl E. Schorske, Kenneth M. Setton, Kenneth M. Starnpp, Chester G. Starr, Sylvia L. Thrupp Strayer, Merze Tate, Emma Lou Thombrough, Brian Tierney, and George R. Woolfolk. Joining this distinguished list are George F. Kennan, H. Leon Prather, Sr., and Nicholas V. Riasanovsky. The following citations were read by president-elect John Coatsworth at the general meeting:

"George F. Kennan is lauded tonight both for his scholarly distinction as well as for his distinguished public service. Much of his fame among those outside the profession is based largely upon his achievements in diplomacy and particularly in Shaping American policy toward the Soviet Union. Dr. Kennan joined the Foreign Service after graduating from Princeton in 1925. The next several years were marked by intense study and service throughout Europe, including Berlin, Vienna, Prague, Lisbon, and London. The focus of his attention and research, however, remained with Russia and its people. It was from Moscow that he sent the "long telegram" urging the United States government to stand firm against Soviet expansion in Eastern Europe. This was followed by the July 1947 essay in Foreign Affairs, signed "X," which enunciated his policy of containment.

"Not long after his return to the United States in the late 1940s, Dr. Kennan joined the Institute for Advanced Study and became a professor in the School of Historical Studies in 1956. To commemorate his extraordinary achievements, the School has recently established the George F. Kennan Professorship and Memberships. He has authored 21 books, two of which have won Pulitzer Prizes and National Book Awards. Currently, Dr. Kennan is working on the third volume of his history of the Franco-Russian alliance. His many honors include the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Albert Einstein Peace Prize, and over 30 honorary degrees from universities throughout the world. To these richly deserved honors, we are happy to add the AHA Award for Scholarly Distinction in recognition of his outstanding contributions to historical scholarship."

“H. Leon Prather, Sr., is uniquely deserving of the Award for Scholarly Distinction. His accomplishments as a scholar and teacher are sufficient alone to warrant this recognition. Dr. Prather's service at Tennessee State University began in 1960 and continued until his retirement as professor in 1990. His commitment to academic excellence and considerable leadership talents led to several administrative appointments at Tennessee State. His publications have encompassed scholarly investigations in the historiography of American race relations. His research has touched upon Reconstruction after the Civil War, African American history, and the civil rights movement. Dr. Prather's publications include Resurgent Politics and Educational Progressivism in the New South: North Carolina, 1890-1913 (1979) and We Have Taken a City: Wilmington Racial Massacre and Coup of 1898 (1984).

"In the preface of We Have Taken a City, Dr. Prather comments on the wealth of history that tends to treat blacks as passive victims rather than focus on black successes, such as the creation of flourishing black institutions, the enduring black family, and the cultural contributions to the nation. He notes 'the definitive pen of the black scholar is needed to correct the distortions and to fill in the glaring omissions.' Through his prolific career and distinguished scholarship, his teaching, his mentorship of younger colleagues, and his service to the profession, Leon Prather has gained recognition among those in African American history as a pioneer."

"Nicholas V. Riasanovsky has made numerous contributions to the field of Russian history during his many years of professional achievement. Recipient of the Award for Distinguished Contributions to Slavic Studies, bestowed by the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS) in 1993, Professor Riasanovsky is recognized as a pioneer in the field of Russian intellectual history. His widely used textbook, A History of Russia, now in its fifth edition, has introduced thousands of American students to the sweep of Russia's history and culture, while his outstanding studies of such topics as official nationality, images of Peter the Great, and the teachings of the Slavophiles have made an indelible impression on the thinking and the writing of many leading scholars. Professor Riasanovsky's books and articles on these and other subjects, including a pathbreaking study of Charles Fourier and a history of West European romanticism, not only display great erudition; they also attest to Riasanovsky's lifelong effort to comprehend the mutability of ideas across time and space.

"Professor Riasanovsky's scholarly achievement is matched by the quality of his service to the profession. In addition to the usual university honors and responsibilities, including chairmanship of the history department at the University of California at Berkeley, he has served as president of the AAASS, as chair of the Vucinich Prize Committee, and as a member of the National Council for Soviet and East European Research. Founding editor of California Slavic Studies, Professor Riasanovsky has rendered years of service to the editorial boards of Russian Review and other major journals. His reputation as a humane and inspiring teacher is unsurpassed, and he is known at Berkeley for the fairness and good judgment that he brought to any number of complex political situations that developed from the Free Speech Movement onward. His colleagues at the University of California have recognized his accomplishments by awarding Professor Riasanovsky the Sidney Hellman Ehrman Chair in European History, and his former students have recently honored him with a splendid Festschrift edition of Russian History/Histoire Russe. For all his varied achievements and for the wisdom that he has brought to our profession and to the field of Russian history within it, the American Historical Association is proud to present Nicholas Riasanovsky with this richly deserved award."

Troyer Steele Anderson Prize

Established in 1963 through a bequest by Frank Maloy Anderson, a longtime AHA member, this prize is awarded for outstanding contributions to the advancement of the purposes of the Association and has been conferred only twice—in 1970 to Boyd Shafer, former AHA executive secretary and managing editor of the American Historical Review, and in 1990 to Willie Lee Rose, primary author of the 1970 Report of the AHA's Ad Hoc Committee on the Status of Women. On the recommendation of the AHA's Professional Division, the Council resolved in 1990 to award the prize at least once every five years. The AHA Council selects a recipient based on recommendations from the Professional Division, which serves as a nominating jury in consultation with the Research and Teaching Divisions. President-elect Coatsworth read the following citation at the presentation ceremony.

"Joseph E. Harris's academic profile is captured very well in the criteria for the title of distinguished professor, which he was awarded at Howard University in 1992: 'one who has achieved extraordinary distinction in scholarship, research, and professional performance though a sustained record of achievement at the highest level of performance; someone who is recognized both by professional societies and other groups such as foundations, government bodies, and community groups for academic excellence in providing new knowledge in their field of expertise.'

"This title is a fitting symbol for the career of this leading Africanist who has been a pioneer of highlighting the linkages between Africa and its peoples and other parts of the world. No single scholar has done more to promote the concept of the African diaspora. Yet, while pursuing this with relentless passion, he has shown a refreshing absence of ideology, and an insistence on inclusiveness for all groups, as opposed to any form of ethnocentrism. In this regard, his work within the American Historical Association has in many respects mirrored that in the profession.

"Counting among his mentors the distinguished historians Rayford Logan and John Hope Franklin, Harris shares the approach to African studies he once described for the pioneer Africanist William Leo Hansberry, who, in Harris's words, 'regarded African studies as a necessary means to develop or maintain black pride and confidence in a world dominated politically, economically, and culturally by whites. However, he was by no stretch of the imagination a racist; he believed in racial harmony, but he also believed that a prerequisite for that harmony was a fuller appreciation of the black heritage.'

"Much of Harris's own career has been an unabashed crusade for that same cause. He chose this field of specialization while a master's student at Howard and went on to complete his doctorate at Northwestern University. His concepts on the African diaspora began to emerge in 1969, when after brief teaching stints at other institutions he settled at Williams College as professor of history and director of the Afro-American Studies Program, and began his intensive research and publishing career. His first book, The African Presence in Asia, was published in 1971, then Africans and Their History in 1972. Several others soon followed, most notably Pillars in Ethiopian History, Global Dimensions of the African Diaspora, and in 1994, African-American Reactions to War in Ethiopia, 1936-1941. Among his recent publications are original maps on the diaspora. During the years at Williams, Harris was also able to travel in Africa and to spend a year and a half teaching in Kenya. At home he became an outspoken critic within the African Studies Association concerning the dearth of African perspectives in historical scholarship on Africa.

“It was upon his return to Howard University in 1975, because, in his own words, he 'missed hearing the drums,’ that Harris's involvement in national and international organizations reached full stride. During just one two-year period in the 1980s, what he has termed 'the Diaspora trail’ led him to Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, and the Indian Ocean island nation of Mauritius. Funding from the Ford Foundation and UNESCO enabled him to launch the African Diaspora Studies Newsletter in 1984. In support of his diaspora activities, he has organized international conferences at home and abroad and has been awarded grants from other agencies such as the United States Information Agency and the National Park Service. His numerous, related service positions include membership on the council of Foreign Relations and the International Congress of African Studies, appointment as a commissioner of the National Museum of African Art, and membership on the boards of the Association of American Colleges and the Association of Afro-American Life and History. In these roles he has contributed greatly to improvements in interpreting African and African American history to the broader public.

"Within the American Historical Association, his most conspicuous role has been his service as founding chair of the Association's Committee on Minority Historians from 1991-94. The establishment of the committee, largely upon his initiative, is yet one further projection of his commitment to the principle that all perspectives be fairly represented within the profession. During his tenure as chair, the committee established the Wesley-Logan Prize for African Diaspora Studies, began the pamphlet series entitled Diversity within America, gained a session at the annual meeting, and developed the Why Become a Historian? pamphlet. At a time when the discipline, and indeed all academic disciplines, are achieving increased awareness of the value of global perspectives, it is fitting that the Association should pay special tribute to confess Joseph Harris, who in responding to critics of his admission in one of his books of some African complicity in the slave trade, replied, 'I'm pleased people have said, "You know, your book is not all praiseworthy," because it wasn't written to praise. It was written to reconstruct as close to reality as possible.'"

Eugene Asher Distinguished Teaching Award

While the AHA has traditionally recognized outstanding scholarship, for over 100 years there was no prize honoring teaching. In 1986 the AHA's Teaching Division recommended and the Council approved the establishment of an annual award to recognize both excellence in teaching and knowledge of the subject of history. The award is given jointly by the AHA and the Society for History Education (SHE) and is named for the late Eugene Asher, former executive secretary of SHE and for decades a central figure in efforts to improve the quality of history teaching. The Teaching Division oversees the selection of the recipient of the award; nominations are submitted by the memberships of the AHA and SHE. Individuals are asked to nominate a teacher who, by inspirational impact and excellence, encouraged that individual to study history. Eligible for consideration are school, undergraduate, and graduate instructors.

Stephen Dow Beckham, professor of history at Lewis and Clark College, was awarded the 1994 Asher Award at the AHA's general meeting in Chicago. Dr. Beckham was nominated by Stefan Tanaka (Univ. of California at San Diego). Dr. Tanaka read portions of his nomination letter at the presentation ceremony.

"Professor Beckham's classes fit all the criteria which I consider necessary for a good teacher.… But the aspect of his teaching that was most important was less in the classroom than in informal situations.

"In the early 70s there were few women and minority historians (none at Linfield). Material was generally presented within orthodox narratives; my high school instruction and the curriculum at Linfield only taught about the United States and Europe. This is where Professor Beckham was most important; he opened up the possibility and importance of histories of the silent and silenced.

"Professor Beckham raised questions about those pasts that were often forgotten or relegated to the realm of secondary or "merely" personal importance. He gave others, such as the Pacific Northwest Indians, meaningful places by bringing out the multiplicities, contention, and discontinuities of the past.... With his encouragement I began research on an anti-Japanese incident in Oregon. I learned about Japanese Americans at that time when the Japanese American community rarely discussed the internment/concentration camps; high school or college courses on Asian Americans did not exist, and classes on immigrants to the U.S. focused on Ellis Island, even on the West Coast

"These are still contentious issues today, but the increase of women and minorities in our profession (something I consider Crucial, not debilitating, to its stability and growth), as well as the use of different approaches to the study of history attest to the importance of people like Professor Beckham at a time when such attitudes were less common.

"In short, through his guidance and encouragement I began to realize the discontinuities and variability of pasts and our contestation over historical narratives."

John E. O'Connor Film Award

In recognition of his exceptional role as a pioneer in both teaching and research regarding film and history, the American Historical Association established this award in honor of John E. O'Connor of the New Jersey Institute of Technology. The award seeks to recognize outstanding interpretations of history through the medium of film or video. Essential elements are stimulation of thought, imaginative use of the media, effective presentation of information and ideas, sensitivity to modern scholarship, and accuracy. The production should encourage viewers to ask questions about historical interpretations as well as make a contribution to the understanding of history.

The second O'Connor Award was presented to Freedom on My Mind, directed and produced by Connie Field and Marilyn Mulford, of Clarity Film Productions. President-elect Coatsworth read the committee's citation:

"This compelling documentary examines the civil rights struggle in Mississippi, culminating in the 1964 'Freedom Summer' campaign. By artfully synthesizing interviews with grassroots activists, a wide range of contemporary found footage, and the best recent scholarship, the film reveals how the civil rights movement profoundly transformed the lives of its Mississippi participants, and how they, in tum, changed forever the face of American politics and race relations”

Nancy Lyman Roelker Mentorship Awards

In recognition of Nancy Lyman Roelker's role as a teacher, scholar, and committee member of the historical profession, and on the occasion of her75th birthday, friends, colleagues, and former students established the Nancy Lyman Roelker Mentorship Award. The annual award recognizes and encourages a special quality exemplified by Professor Roelker through the human component in her teaching of history.

Mentoring should encompass not only a belief in the value of the study of history but also a commitment to and a love of teaching it to students regardless of age or career goals. Advising is an essential component, but it also combines a consistent personal commitment by the mentor to the student as a person. Offering a human alternative, frequently in quiet and unacknowledged ways, mentors like Professor Roelker believe that the essence of history lies in its human scope. With this award the American Historical Association attests to the special role of mentors to the future of the historical profession.

The award is offered on a three-year cycle to avoid competition among different levels of faculty mentorship. Nominations for the 1994 prize were for the precollegiate level. President-elect Coatsworth read the following citations:

"The third Nancy Lyman Roelker Mentorship Award honors two outstanding secondary school history teachers, Marjorie Wall Bingham (St. Louis Park High School, Minnesota) and Edward Prentice, Jr. (Rogers High School, Arkansas). This year marks the first competition for high school teachers, and brought the largest number of nominees and letters in the three-year history of the honor. The quality of teaching and mentoring was so extraordinary that the committee decided to give the award to two corecipients, who themselves stand for the many other dedicated history teachers who inspired the outpouring of appreciation."

Marjorie Wall Bingham

"For 30 years you bestowed on your students at St. Louis Park High School in Minnesota the triple gift of engaging them in history, setting high standards for them and for yourself, and offering them a compassionate helping hand.

"Your achievements in bringing women into history changed the social studies curriculum across the country, and your teaching in American history and world area studies inspired generations of students to read, think, and write about the past in a way that changed their lives in the present.

"In their subsequent careers, whether in history, journalism, music, law, or public service, the students who benefited from your lifelong influence agree that 'Doc Bingham' showed them the way to the pursuit of excellence, with guidance both tough and tender and an unflagging faith in their ability to do well, and then to do better.

"For your devotion to history and to your students, we are honored to confer on you the third Nancy Lyman Roelker Mentorship Award."

Edward Prentice, Jr.

"For students at Rogers High School in Arkansas you have been teacher, mentor, and friend for over20 years, making a difference in their school days and in their lives.

"Your courses in American and Asian history brought the past to life, always relating history to present events and making it matter to your students, every one of them. It is said that no student ever sat quietly at the back of Mr. Prentice's class or remained untouched by his spirited motivation.

"Parents, students, and fellow teachers report that the whole town of Rogers has benefited from your presence. Your concern for your students does not stop at graduation but sees the graduates on to college and beyond.

"Not only as mentor but as friend you are unfailingly there for your students—in history class, on their visits to your farm, and in their lives and the lives of their families. For this dedication we are pleased to confer on you the third Nancy Lyman Roelker Mentorship Award."

Honorary Foreign Member

At its second annual meeting in Saratoga in 1885, the newly appointed Committee on Nominations for Honorary Membership introduced a resolution, which was adopted, that appointed Leopold von Ranke as the first honorary foreign member. In the intervening 109 years, only 78 individuals have been so honored. Previously selected biennially, selection is now made annually in honoring a foreign scholar who is distinguished in his or her field and who has "notably aided the work of American historians."

President-elect Coatsworth announced the addition of Eric Hobsbawm to the list of 20 living honorary members.

"Eric J. E. Hobsbawm's contributions to the profession transcend virtually every chronological and geographical boundary. His writings, including 14 authored and several more edited volumes, have treated subjects British, European, American, Latin American, and world historical from the 17th through the 20th century. He is one of the pioneers of the development of the 'new social history' and, in particular, the approach to the past known as history from below or 'history from the bottom up.' Through such classic studies as Primitive Rebels (1959), Captain Swing (1969 with George Rude), Bandits (1969), Labouring Men (1964), and Worlds of Labour (1984), he is recognized as a founding figure of both peasant studies and labor history. His trilogy on the history of the long 19th century, The Age of Revolution, 1789-1848 (1962); The Age of Capital, 1848-1875 (1975); and The Age of Empire, 1875-1914 (1987), has significantly shaped the thinking of generations of historians and their students and they remain the standard texts of European and world history from the time of the French and Industrial Revolutions through the Great War.

"Professor Hobsbawm is also a founding editor of Past & Present and served on its board of editors for 35 years. Although his teaching career was carried on mostly at the University of London (1947-82), he has also held visiting appointments at universities around the world, most recently at the New School for Social Research since 1984.

"Certain generations, by their unusual creativity and willingness to risk, provide the models that others follow. Eric Hobsbawm is a member of such a generation, and the work of those who have followed has been immeasurably enriched by his presence in the profession. The Association is pleased to announce the addition of Eric Hobsbawm to the rolls of honorary foreign members."

1994 Book Awards

At the annual meeting in Chicago, the following prizes were announced for the year 1994. The committee's citations are recorded below:

Herbert Baxter Adams Prize

John Martin (Trinity Univ.) for Venice's Hidden Enemies: Italian Heretics in a Renaissance City (Univ. of California Press, 1993). This beautifully crafted and eloquent book presents a compelling analysis of the varieties of religious dissent in 16th-century Venice. Firmly based on archival research, Martin's study successfully places religious dissent in the intersecting contexts of Venetian political, social, and economic history without losing its focus on conscious religious decisions made by individuals. Martin's explanation of the Venetian state's eventual movement against dissent is highly convincing.

George Louis Beer Prize

Gerhard L. Weinberg (Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) for A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II (Cambridge Univ. Press. 1994). Prodigiously researched in German, British, and American archives, A World at Arms constitutes a fine example of modern international history. While focusing considerable attention on the European and Atlantic aspects of the conflict the author encompasses every other corner of the globe as well and skillfully demonstrates interconnections among the various theaters of the war. Multidimensional in scope, the book contains material on diplomatic, military, technological, and home front issues. A World at Arms represents a substantial contribution to scholarship on World War II by a thoughtful and productive historian.

Albert J. Beveridge Award

Karen Ordahl Kupperman (Univ. of Connecticut at Storrs) for Providence Island. 1630-1641: The Other Puritan Colony (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993). While John Winthrop's colonists were settling Massachusetts Bay, a less successful contingent of Puritans founded a plantation on Providence Island off the coast of Nicaragua. Kuppennan's well-wrought study offers more than the fascinating story of this little known and short-lived English venture. Her carefully argued book prompts historians to reassess the traditional North American paradigm of Cavaliers and Yankees, showing us what happened when racial slavery and Puritan theology came together in the New World.

Paul Birdsall Prize

Leonard V. Smith (Oberlin Coll.) for Between Mutiny and Obedience (Princeton Univ. Press, 1994). In a book that is analytical in approach, provocative in idea, and elegant in style, Smith has skillfully demonstrated that social history and military history are indeed complementary fields. Smith's study casts important new light on the French army during World War I and provides a model that places a military unit within the context of a society at war. He shows how, in the crucible of bloody combat, command authority changed within the army as soldiers imposed their own solutions and learned to deal with the horrors of trench warfare and stalemate. Smith transcends area and field to challenge his readers, and perhaps change how future historians will study armies at war.

James Henry Breasted Prize

Miranda Shaw (Univ. of Richmond) for Passionate Enlightenment: Women in Tantric Buddhism (Princeton Univ. Press, 1994). Passionate Enlightenment joins with recent scholarship on women in other parts of Asia in seeking to "reclaim the historical agency of women.” Focusing on neglected texts by women of medieval India, Shaw argues forcefully that women must be included among the creators of Tantric Buddhism, that they were empowered by participating in, indeed molding, religious ritual.

Albert R Corey Prize

Royden K. Loewen (Univ. of Manitoba) for Family, Church, and Market: A Mennonite Community in the Old and the New Worlds 1850-1930 (Univ. of Toronto Press, 1993). Loewen's book is a superbly successful example of ethnic history: a small community, in two superficially similar hut remarkably different prairie settings; over three generations; with masterful use of theoretical literatures in anthropology, economics, and geography. A significant pioneering contribution to the field of North American comparative history.

John K, Fairbank Prize

Kenneth Pomeranz (Univ. of California at Irvine) for The Making of a Hinterland: State, Society, and Economy in Inland North China, 1853-1937 (Univ. of California Press, 1993). The Making of a Hinterland shows how regional history can illuminate a larger process of state building in unexpected and exciting ways. It offers a sustained narrative of the relationships among a region in China, the state, and global capitalism. Assiduously researched and elegantly written, its ambitious chronological scope also informs the history that precedes and follows it.

Herbert Feis Award

Liza Crihfield Dalby (Berkeley, Calif.) for Kimono: Fashioning Culture (Yale Univ. Press, 1993). Dalby traces the evolution of the kimono over a 2,000-year period, from its Chinese origins to its contemporary role as a symbol of Japanese culture. Dalby's work skillfully blends cultural anthropology and social history to read changing fashions in clothing as eloquent documents of a nation' s social and economic history.

Leo Gershoy Award

Isser Woloch (Columbia Univ.) for The New Regime: Transformations of the French Civic Order, 1789-1820s (W.W. Norton & Co., 1994). Woloch's book makes a truly major contribution to "early modern European history," helping readers to see during the era of the French Revolution the beginnings of certain distinctive features of the modern civic order. The book is exhaustively documented., clearly and elegantly written, and solid and trustworthy in its findings.

Joan Kelly Memorial Prize

Mary Louise Roberts (Stanford Univ.) for Civilization Without Sexes, Reconstructing Gender in Postwar France, 1917-1927 (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1994). Beautifully written and clearly argued, Civilization Without Sexes explores the debate in post-World War I France among politicians, soldiers, journalists, feminists, and ordinary women and men over women and gender. This debate became a medium for the French to discuss the horrors of the war. The reconstruction of gender ensuing from it made abortion a capital crime while women's suffrage failed. This book is a model of gender history in which women's voices are heard and both gender theory and women's history are used to illuminate historical processes in the most important areas of national politics as well as the deepest reaches of ordinary life.

Littleton-Griswold Prize

G. Edward White (Univ. of Virginia) for Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: Law and the Inner Self (Oxford Univ.Press.I993). White's biography of Holmes now sets the standard against which all future scholarship on that brilliant justice must be measured. White limns a portrait of a romantic individual torn between the demands of Victorian convention and the imperatives of an emerging modernism. Perhaps most important, White uses the life of Holmes to illuminate three central aspects of jurisprudence in the modern United States: the limits of judicial review in constitutional cases; free speech rights; and the principle that judges "make" rather than "find" law.

Howard R. Marraro Prize

Walter L. Adamson (Emory Univ.) for Avant-Garde Florence: From Modernism to Fascism (Harvard Univ. Press, 1993). In Avant-Garde Florence, Adamson offers a fresh and important reinterpretation of the cultural origins of fascism. Adamson has skillfully designed a detailed and nuanced study of the Florentine La Voce intellectual circle to address broad questions central to 20th-century Italian cultural history. In locating the cultural origins of fascism in turn-of-the-century avant-garde critiques of Italian liberalism, Adamson forces scholars to rethink the connections among fascism, liberal democracy, and Marxism as cultural and political ideologies.

Premio del Rey Prize

Teofilo F. Ruiz (Brooklyn Coli. at the City Univ. of New York) for Crisis and Continuity: Land and Town in Late Medieval Castile (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1994). Ruiz's book musters an impressive array of significant but difficult sources to address equally significant but difficult problems in the history of Old Castile. Ruiz embraces both the Castilian town and countryside in his research and brilliantly evokes the landscape and harsh beauty of the region. His book illuminates important aspects of late medieval Castilian history, while also providing insight into the region's early modern development.

James Harvey Robinson Prize

American Social History Project (Hunter Coli. at the City Univ. of New York) for Who Built America? From the Centennial Celebration of 1876 to The Great War of 1914, authored by Roy Rosenzweig (George Mason Univ.), Steve Brier (ASHP), and Josh Brown (ASHP) and published on CD-ROM by The Voyager Company in 1993. Who Built America? is a useful tool in making a broad range of primary sources accessible to a wide audience. Imaginatively constructed and well researched, Who Built America? provides users with the opportunity to conduct independent research and to construct creative representations V.L. of the past. Prize committee members noted the CD-ROM's potential to influence history education in schools and universities by providing a model for transforming traditional approaches to curriculum, teaching, and learning.

Wesley-Logan Prize

Richard W. Thomas (Michigan State Univ.) for Life for Us Is What We Make It: Building Black Community in Detroit, 1915-1945 (Indiana Univ. Press, 1992). Richard W. Thomas's readable analysis of the process by which African Americans in Detroit shaped their community into a center of black progress is in some respects a seminal study. Building on earlier work on African American urbanization, this work contributes an analysis of the role of industrial workers in this process and. in addition, analyzes the roles of other groups to present a holistic concept of urban community formation.