The Mark Lynton History Prize is an annual $10,000 award given to a book "of history, on any subject, that best combines intellectual or scholarly distinction with felicity of expression". The prize is one of three awards given as part of the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize administered by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism and by the Columbia University School of Journalism.
History The prize is named in honor of Mark Lynton, a refugee from Nazi Germany, Second World War officer, and automobile industry executive. In 1939, Lynton was a Jewish German-born student studying history at Cambridge, when he and other German nationals were rounded up and interned in detention camps in England and Canada as enemy aliens, suspected of being Nazi sympathizers. When Lynton was released, he joined the British Army, and became a tank commander.
He was later promoted to the rank of Major in the occupying force, the Army of the Rhine, where he helped interrogate high-ranking Nazi officers. Lynton memorialized his odyssey in his memoir, Accidental Journey: A Cambridge Internee's Memoir of World War II. The prize was established by his wife, Marion, children, Lili and Michael, and grandchildren, Lucinda, Eloise Lynton and Maisie Lynton, to honor Lynton who was an avid reader of history. The Lynton family has underwritten the Lukas Prize Project since its inception in 1998.
Recipients +Award winners and finalists Year Author Title Result 1999King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial AfricaWinner2000Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War IIWinner2001Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754–1766Winner2002Winner2003Winner2004River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild WestWinner2005Beasts of the Field: A Narrative History of California Farmworkers, 1769–1913Winner2006Winner2007Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa, 1787–2005Winner2008Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early AmericaWinner2009Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global WorldWinner2010Winner2011WinnerClaude Levi-Strauss: The Poet in His LaboratoryFinalist2012Common Sense: A Political HistoryWinnerPox: An American History FinalistConversions: Two Family Stories from the Reformation and Modern America Finalist2013WinnerFinalist2014Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane FranklinWinnerFinalist2015Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public OpinionWinnerNapoleon: A LifeFinalist2016KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration CampsWinnerBlack Earth: The Holocaust as History and WarningFinalistShortlistShortlistCuster's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New AmericaShortlist2017City of Dreams: The 400-Year Epic History of Immigrant New YorkWinnerSpain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939FinalistShortlistJust Another Southern Town: Mary Church Terrell and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Nation’s CapitalShortlistShortlist2018Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941WinnerPrairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder FinalistShortlistAli: A LifeShortlistShortlist2019WinnerWinnerFrederick Douglass: Prophet of FreedomFinalistAsperger's Children ShortlistPogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of HistoryShortlist2020Black Radical: The Life and Times of William Monroe TrotterWinnerHow to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United StatesFinalistShortlistLakota America ShortlistHitler Shortlist2021WinnerVanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All FinalistShortlist and Tamara PayneShortlistThose Who ForgetShortlist2022Surviving Katyń: Stalin's Polish Massacre and the Search for TruthWinnerFinalistShortlistYou Are Not American: Citizenship Stripping from Dred Scott to the Dreamers ShortlistAll That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake Shortlist2023Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: The Reporters Who Took on a World at WarWinnerBad Mexicans: Race, Empire & Revolution in the BorderlandsFinalistG-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American CenturyShortlistShortlistIndigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North AmericaShortlist2024WinnerJudgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern AsiaFinalistKing: A LifeShortlistBefore the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil RightsShortlistAnansi’s Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the WorldShortlist2025Native Nations: A Millennium in North AmericaWinnerCOMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil WarFinalistPlantation Goods: A Material History of American SlaveryFinalistSavings and Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman’s BankShortlistShortlist2026WinnerFinalist
See also
List of history awards
References
External links Lukas Prize Project