About the Prize
$50,000 George Washington Book Prize to be Awarded at Mount Vernon
Chestertown, MD — The $50,000 George Washington Book Prize will be awarded at Mount Vernon on May 28 to the author of the most important book on America's founding era published in 2008. The fifth annual award ceremony will take place at 6:30 p.m. at George Washington's Mount Vernon home overlooking the Potomac River, with music and candlelit tours of the mansion, and a black-tie dinner.
Washington College, which co-sponsors and administers the award, announced the three finalists in February to commemorate George Washington's birthday. They are Annette Gordon-Reed's The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (Norton); Kevin J. Hayes's The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson (Oxford); and Jane Kamensky's The Exchange Artist: A Tale of High-Flying Speculation and America's First Banking Collapse (Viking).
The books were selected by a three-person jury of prominent American historians: Joyce Appleby, professor of history emerita at the University of California, Los Angeles, who served as chair; Ira Berlin, Distinguished University Professor of History at the University of Maryland; and Jay Winik, best-selling author and one of the country's leading public historians.
The George Washington Book Prize ($50,000) is one of the most generous in the United States, with a monetary award greater than the Pulitzer Prize for History ($10,000) and the National Book Award ($10,000). Washington College, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York City, and the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association collaborated in 2005 to create the prize, which was awarded in its inaugural year to Ron Chernow for Alexander Hamilton; in 2006 to Stacy Schiff for A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America; in 2007 to Charles Rappleye for Sons of Providence: The Brown Brothers, the Slave Trade, and the American Revolution; and in 2008 to Marcus Rediker for The Slave Ship: A Human History.
Book Prize News
Washington College Announces $50,000 George Washington Book Prize Finalists
2008 Book Prize Winner Named at Mount Vernon
2008 George Washington Book Prize Finalists Announced Charles Rappleye Comes to Washington College for Book Prize Celebration
$50,000 Book Prize Awarded to Charles Rappleye for Sons of Providence
Richard
Gilder and Lewis Lehrman Awarded National Humanities Medal
Contact Information
Joan Smith, George Washington Book Prize Coordinator
E-mail: jsmith7@washcoll.edu
Telephone: (410) 810-7165
Fax: (410) 810-7175
Submissions should be sent to:
George Washington Book Prize
101 South Water Street
Chestertown MD 21620
