The George Washington Prize is a $50,000 award co-sponsored by Washington College, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and George Washington’s Mount Vernon. Founded in 2005, the prize recognizes the year’s best works on the nation’s founding era, especially those that have the potential to advance broad public understanding of American history.
The 2024 prizewinner is David Waldstreicher for The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: A Poet’s Journeys through American Slavery and Independence (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). He was honored on September 21, 2024, at a ceremony held at Mount Vernon, George Washington’s home in Virginia. The event also honored the four other finalists for the award: Michael A. Blaakman, Ned Blackhawk, Cassandra A. Good, and Cynthia A. Kierner.
Submissions
Submissions for the 2025 George Washington Prize must have a date of first publication between January 1, 2024, and December 31, 2024.
Deadline for submission is December 31, 2024.
Please submit five copies of the book plus author and editor contact information to:
George Washington Prize
Fred W. Smith National Library
George Washington’s Mount Vernon
3600 Mount Vernon Memorial Highway
Mount Vernon, VA 22121
For more information on the George Washington Prize, contact:
Stephen McLeod, Director of Library Programs
smcleod@mountvernon.org
(703) 799-8686
George Washington Prize Winners
2024
David Waldstreicher
The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: A Poet’s Journeys through American Slavery and Independence (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
2023
Maurizio Valsania
First Among Men: George Washington and the Myth of American Masculinity (Johns Hopkins University Press)
2022
Bruce A. Ragsdale
Washington at the Plow: The Founding Farmer and the Question of Slavery (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press)
2021
Mary Beth Norton
1774: The Long Year of Revolution (Knopf)
2020
Rick Atkinson
The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775–1777 (Henry Holt)
2019
Colin G. Calloway
The Indian World of George Washington (Oxford University Press)
2018
Kevin J. Hayes
George Washington: A Life in Books (Oxford University Press)
2017
Nathaniel Philbrick
Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution (Viking)
2016
Flora Fraser
The Washingtons: George and Martha, “Join’d by Friendship, Crown’d by Love” (Knopf)
2015
Nick Bunker
An Empire on the Edge: How Britain Came to Fight America (Knopf)
Special Award
Lin-Manuel Miranda
Hamilton: An American Musical
2014
Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy
The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution, and the Fate of the Empire (Yale University Press)
2013
Stephen Brumwell
George Washington: Gentleman Warrior (Quercus)
2012
Maya Jasanoff
Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World (Knopf)
2011
Pauline Maier
Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787–1788 (Simon & Schuster)
2010
Richard Beeman
Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution (Random House)
2009
Annette Gordon-Reed
The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (W.W. Norton)
2008
Marcus Rediker
The Slave Ship: A Human History (Viking)
2007
Charles Rappleye
Sons of Providence: The Brown Brothers, the Slave Trade, and the American Revolution (Simon & Schuster)
2006
Stacy Schiff
A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America (Henry Holt and Company)
2005
Ron Chernow
Alexander Hamilton (Penguin Press)
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