By Elijah McGuire-Berk
Web Editor
The names are in. After narrowing down the field from 60 entries, the seven finalists for the 17th annual George Washington Prize have been announced.
The finalists are: H. Breen for “George Washington’s Journey: The President Forges a New Nation;” Annette Gordon-Reed and Peter S. Onuf for “‘Most Blessed of the Patriarchs’: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of Imagination;” Jane Kamensky for “A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley;” Michael J. Klarman for “The Framers’ Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution;” Mark Edward Lender and Garry Wheeler Stone for “Fatal Sunday: George Washington, the Monmouth Campaign, and the Politics of Battle;” Nathaniel Philbrick for “Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution;” and Alan Taylor for “American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804.”
The prize, formerly the George Washington Book Prize, is a $50,000 award that goes to the best written work which discusses the American Revolution and/or the founding era of American history. It began in 2005 and is sponsored by Washington College, the Gilder Leherman Institute, and George Washington’s Mount Vernon.
For a work to be eligible for the prize, it must have been published in 2016, be a written work, and focus on the period of history between 1760 and 1812. It does not necessarily need to be a book. For example, the script for the play “Hamilton” won a special prize for the 2015 book prize.
The Assistant Director at the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience and Prize Coordinator Jean Wortman said that this year’s judges were a bit unusual, as they were all either previous prize winners or finalists. The finalists are selected by “an independent jury of scholars of Early America and the Revolutionary War, generally people who have written and studied extensively in that era,” she said.
Judges for the first round were David Preston, professor of history at the Citadel College of American History and previous finalist; Kathleen Duval, professor of history at the University of North Carolina and previous finalist; and Nick Bunker, last year’s prize recipient.
Another jury is assembled to select finalists. The judges are made up of representatives from each of the three sponsors of the prize, including two representatives from the College, two representatives from Mount Vernon, two representatives from the Gilder Lehrman Institute, and one independent historian.
The independent historian is included in the judging process, because “we always throw in a tiebreaker,” said Wortman. The jury changes annually and, to avoid any pressure, their identities will remain anonymous until the winner of the prize is announced.
Wortman’s assistant intern, Taylor Patterson, junior, aided Wortman in the task of searching for nominees.
“Last semester was a lot of researching and searching the web for books that had been published in 2016 that had to fit a certain criteria… It was mostly finding those books, and then compiling them into a spreadsheet,” Patterson said.
Once Wortman approved of the list, she would then go to the books’ authors and/or publishers and request five copies of the book for review. It was, according to Patterson, “a lot of unpacking books.”
Regarding the nominees, Wortman noted that the books are all on sale in the College’s bookstore. She couldn’t pick a favorite finalist and recommended all of them.
“We have some excellent historians in the country who have been nominated,” she said. “Start reading; they are really good this year.”
The final victor has yet to be chosen. She or he will be announced during the black-tie gala on May 25 at George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate. The winner will come to campus in the fall semester to give a talk.