About the Prize
$50,000 George Washington Book Prize to be Awarded at Mount Vernon
Chestertown, MD — The fifth annual $50,000 George Washington Book Prize was awarded in a ceremony at Mount Vernon on May 28, 2009 to Annette Gordon-Reed author of award-winning book, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. The fifth annual award was most recently celebrated in a conversation with Hodson Trust-Griswold Director of the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience Adam Goodheart about her work. The conversation, which took place in the new Daniel Z. Gibson Center for the Arts at Washington College, included a question and answer session with the audience, followed by a Jefferson wine and cheese reception and book signing in the lobby.
Washington College, which co-sponsors and administers the award, announced the three finalists in February to commemorate George Washington's birthday. They included 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 Celebration photos...
Contact Information
Lois Kitz , George Washington Book Prize Coordinator
E-mail: lkitz2@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
