Tom Watson Brown Book Award

Open: Call for the 2027 Tom Watson Brown Book Award Submissions:

The Society of Civil War Historians solicits nominations for the Tom Watson Brown Book Award for books published in 2026. Publishers are asked to send books, along with a cover letter nominating the work for the Tom Watson Brown Award, directly to the four prize jurors no later than January 31, 2027. Only books published in 2026 will be considered.

All genres of scholarship on the causes, conduct, and effects, broadly defined, of the Civil War are eligible. This includes, but is not exclusive to, monographs, synthetic works presenting original interpretations, and biographies. Edited collections, works of fiction, poetry, and textbooks, however, will not be considered. Jurors will consider nominated works' scholarly and literary merit as well as the extent to which they make original contributions to our understanding of the period.

Yael Sternhell, Professor of History and American Studies at Tel Aviv University, will chair the prize jury. The other members are Thomas Brown, Professor of History at the University of South Carolina, and R. Isabela Morales, author and public historian. Tad Brown, President of the Watson-Brown Foundation, Inc., will serve as a non-voting member of the jury.

The winner will be announced by August 1, 2027. The prize will be presented at the SCWH banquet at the Southern Historical Association annual meeting, where the winner will deliver a formal address that may be published in a subsequent issue of the Journal of the Civil War Era. Review the call for submissions here.

Previous Winners of the Tom Watson Brown Book Award:

2025: Edda L. Fields-Black, Carnegie Mellon University, for COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War (Oxford University Press, 2024)

2024: Yael Sternhell, Tel Aviv University, for War on Record: The Archive and the Afterlife of the Civil War (Yale University Press, 2023).

2023: R. Isabella Morales, Independent Scholar, for Happy Dreams of Liberty: An American Family in Slavery and Freedom, (Oxford University Press, 2022)

2022: Sebastian Page, University of Oxford, for Black Resettlement and the American Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2021)  

2021: Thavolia Glymph, Peabody Family Distinguished Professor of History, Duke University, for The Women’s Fight: The Civil War’s Battles for Home, Freedom, and Nation (University of North Carolina Press, 2020)

2020: Thomas J. Brown, Professor of History, University of South Carolina, for Civil War Monuments and the Militarization of America (University of North Carolina Press, 2019)

2019: Amy Murrell Taylor, Associate Professor of History, University of Kentucky, for Embattled Freedom: Journeys Through the Civil War’s Slave Refugee Camps (University of North Carolina Press, 2018)

2018: Andrew Lang, Assistant Professor of History, Mississippi State University, for In the Wake of War: Military Occupation, Emancipation, and Civil War America (Louisiana State University Press, 2017)

2017: Christopher Phillips, John and Dorothy Hermanies Professor of American History and University Distinguished Research Professor in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, University of Cincinnati, for The Rivers Ran Backward: The Civil War and the Remaking of the American Middle Border (Oxford University Press, 2016)

2016: Earl J. Hess, Stewart W. McClelland Chair in History, Lincoln Memorial University, for Civil War Infantry Tactics: Training, Combat, and Small-Unit Effectiveness (Louisiana State University Press, 2015)

2015: Shauna Devine, Professor, Schulich School of Medicine and Department of History, Western University, for Learning from the Wounded: The Civil War and the Rise of American Medical Science (The University of North Carolina Press, 2014)

2014: Ari Kelman, Chancellor’s Leadership Professor of History, University of California, Davis, for A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling Over the Memory of Sand Creek (Harvard University Press, 2013)

2013: John Fabian Witt, Allen H. Duff Class of 1960 Professor of Law at Yale Law School and a Professor of History in the Yale History Department, for Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History (Simon & Schuster, 2012)

2012: Gary W. Gallagher, John L. Nau III Professor in the History of the American Civil War at the University of Virginia, for The Union War (Harvard University Press, 2011)

2011: Mark W. Geiger, a 2011-12 Kluge Fellow at the Library of Congress and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University Library of Congress and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Sydney, for Financial Fraud and Guerrilla Violence in Missouri’s Civil War, 1861-1865 (Yale University Press, 2010)

2010: Daniel E. Sutherland, Distinguished Professor of History, University of Arkansas, for A Savage Conflict: The Decisive Role of Guerrillas in the American Civil War  (University of North Carolina, 2009)