Editor’s Note: The purpose of this column, which is published in Perspectives on History as space permits, is to recognize and honor the accomplishments of AHA members. Submissions are welcome; entries will be published in alphabetical order. To submit an entry, write to David Darlington, Associate Editor, AHA, 400 A Street, SE, Washington, DC 20003-3889.

Rafis Abazov (Harriman Inst., Columbia Univ.) received the Central Asian Geographic Society Award (2008) for his contribution in developing geographic knowledge about Central Asia and Kazakhstan. Abazov’s Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of Central Asia (Palgrave/Macmillan, January 2008) presents an overview of cultural, political, and geopolitical changes on the Great Silk Road from western China to southern Russia and the Middle East, and the geopolitics of the U.S. and Russian military bases and the international war on terrorism.

Douglas M. Arnold (NEH) was the 2007 winner of the Homer D. Babbidge Jr. Award, given annually by the Association for the Study of Connecticut History (ASCH) for the best book on Connecticut history. Arnold edited The Public Records of the State of Connecticut, Volumes XVIII (1816–17) and XIX (1818). These volumes document key developments in Connecticut’s history: the rise of the Reform coalition, the fall of the state’s Federalist Party, the writing and ratification of the Constitution of 1818, and religious disestablishment.

Gabor S. Boritt (Gettysburg Coll.) was awarded a 2008 National Humanities Medal in November 2008. Boritt is director and founder of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College, and was recognized “for his scholarship on Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War era.”

Michael C. Coleman (Univ. of Jyväskylä, Finland) is a long-time member of the AHA. In June 2007, he published his third book in the United States: American Indians, the Irish, and Government Schooling: A Comparative Study (Univ. of Nebraska Press). In March 2008, he was named “Teacher of the Year” at the University of Jyväskylä. And in October 2008, he was given the title “professor.” (As in many European systems, most tenured members of Finnish university departments are lecturers; he became a tenured lecturer in 1972).

Carol Jose has co-authored You Are Not Forgotten: A Family’s Quest for Truth and the Founding of the National League of Families with the late Evelyn Grubb. Grubb’s husband, a USAF reconnaissance pilot, was shot down over North Vietnam in January 1966. His capture alive and walking was photographed and disseminated worldwide for years, but Mrs. Grubb, pregnant with their fourth child, never heard from her husband again. She became a Washington activist for the Geneva Convention, interacted with President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, petitioned the United Nations for humane treatment of POWs and invocation of the Geneva Convention on behalf of their families, and helped found the National League of Families of POA/MIA. In 1971, as national coordinator of the league, she presented the first rendition of the POW/MIA flag to then Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird. Only after eight years of silence did Evelyn Grubb learn that her husband purportedly had died in captivity shortly after capture. The date and cause of death remain unsubstantiated. Henry Kissinger writes the foreword. (Vandamere Press, October 2008)

Erez Manela, the Dunwalke associate professor of American history at Harvard University, is among eight individuals who have been awarded fellowships as part of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Visiting Scholars Program for 2009. The fellowship program supports scholars and practitioners in the early stages of their careers—both postdoctoral fellows and untenured junior faculty—who show potential of becoming leaders in the humanities, policy studies, and social sciences. During his residency in Cambridge, Manela will be working on a project titled, “The Eradication of Smallpox: An International History.” The project is a study of the World Health Organization’s Global Smallpox Eradication Program, which provides insight into the history of the Cold War, postcolonial international relations, the role of transnational organizations in globalization, and the development of modern medicine and international public health.

The Encyclopedia of American Jewish History (ABC-CLIO, 2008), two volumes, edited by members Stephen H. Norwood (Univ. of Oklahoma) and Eunice G. Pollack, won the Editor’s Choice Award from the American Library Association.

Jeffrey B. Perry published Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883–1918 with Columbia University Press in November 2008.

William H. Thomas Jr. published Unsafe for Democracy: World War I and the U.S. Justice Department’s Covert Campaign to Suppress Dissent with the University of Wisconsin Press in November 2008. Thomas is an independent scholar who received his PhD from the University of Iowa. This book was published with the support of the Evjue Foundation, Inc., the charitable arm of The Capital Times, and the Anonymous Fund of the College of Letters and Science at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. It is part of the series Studies in American Thought and Culture, Paul S. Boyer, series editor.