The Paul Birdsall Prize is an biennial prize given to a historian by the

American Historical Association The American Historical Association (AHA) is the oldest professional association of historians in the United States and the largest such organization in the world. Founded in 1884, the AHA works to protect academic freedom, develop professional s ...

Background

The prize was established by a donation from

Hans W. Gatzke Hans Wilhelm Gatzke (1915–1987) was a German-born historian of German foreign policy since World War I and belonged to the young emigrants from Nazi Germany who became historians in the United States. He is remembered by a named professorship in ...

, who remained anonymous until his death. The prize is named for Paul M. Birdsall, a historian of European diplomatic and military affairs, and a foreign service officer.

Eligibility

Preference will be given to early-career academics, but established scholars and nonacademic candidates will not be excluded. Books published in English and bearing a copyright of 2016 or 2017 are eligible for the 2018 prize..

Notable winners

Past winners of the prize include: 1986:

Robert A. Doughty Robert Allan Doughty (born November 4, 1943) is an American military historian and retired United States Army officer. Early life Doughty was born in Tullos, Louisiana, on November 4, 1943, to parents John and Georgia Doughty. Career He a ...

for ''The Seeds of Disaster: The Development of French Army Doctrine, 1919-1939'' 1990: Brian Villa for ''Unauthorized Action: Mountbatten and the Dieppe Raid'' 1992:

Dennis Showalter Dennis Edwin Showalter (February 12, 1942 – December 30, 2019) was a professor emeritus of history at Colorado College. Showalter specialized in German military history. He was president of the American Society for Military History from 1997 to ...

for ''Tannenberg: Clash of Empires 1914'' 1994: Leonard V. Smith for ''Between Mutiny and Obedience: The Case of the French Fifth Infantry Division During World War I'' 1996: David G. Herrmann for ''The Arming of Europe and the Making of the First World War'' 1998: John F. Beeler for ''British Naval Policy in the Gladstone-Disraeli Era, 1866-1880'' 2000:

Marc Trachtenberg Marc Trachtenberg (born February 9, 1946) is a professor of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. He received his Ph.D in History from the University of California, Berkeley in 1974 and taught for many years for the history ...

for ''A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945-1963'' 2002: Matthew Connelly for ''A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria's Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era'' 2004:

Robert M. Citino Robert M. Citino (born June 19, 1958) is an American military historian and the Samuel Zemurray Stone Senior Historian at the National WWII Museum. He is a leading authority on modern German military history, with an emphasis upon World War I ...

for ''Blitzkrieg to Desert Storm: The Evolution of Operational Warfare'' 2006: Mark Atwood Lawrence for ''Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam'' 2008: Jeffrey A. Engel for ''Cold War at 30,000 Feet: The Anglo-American Aviation Fight for Supremacy'' 2010: Jonathan Reed Winkler for ''Nexus: Strategic Communications and American Security in World War I'' 2012: Edith Sheffer for ''Burned Bridge: how East and West Germans Made the Iron Curtain'' 2014: Jacob Darwin Hamblin for '' Arming Mother Nature: The Birth of Catastrophic Environmentalism'' 2016: Bruno Cabanes for ''The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918-1924'' 2018: Tarak Barkawi for ''Soldiers of Empire: Indian and British Armies in World War II'' 2020: Brandon M. Schechter for ''The Stuff of Soldiers: A History of the Red Army in World War II through Objects'' 2022: Bastiaan Willems for ''Violence in Defeat: The Wehrmacht on German Soil, 1944-1945''

References

External links

* {{Prizes and Awards of the American Historical Association American Historical Association book prizes