THS Prizes

The Donald Kagan Best Book in European History Prize

2004
Ken Alder, The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World (Free Press, 2002).
Ken Alder’s book is deeply empirical in the way the work of historians can and should be. This is a brilliantly written book. One has the clear impression of being in the presence of a first-rate mind. Alder’s focus appears microscopic, as he brings to life two 18th-century scientists by means of their private correspondence. Thanks to the author’s sure-footed mining of previously ignored archival sources, he bares the characters of the two men in a way that brings vivisection to mind. At the same time, he makes the reader experience the hair-raising difficulties his heroes encounter as they traverse Europe from the North Sea to the Mediterranean while the world is going up in flames, with the armies of the French Revolution on the march.

Jerry Z. Muller, The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Modern European Thought (Knopf, 2002).
Muller’s book covers an impressive range of material linked together in an elegant and illuminating way. It is, in our judgment, an original, fair-minded, lucid, and eloquent work. It deals incisively with problems that not only emerged in the past but remain with us today. Writing about economic theorists as different from each other as Voltaire, Hegel, Marx, or Schumpeter, Muller places each of them firmly in their time and place, and he manages the extraordinary feat of making even abstruse and difficult writers such as Georg Simmel comprehensible.

The Arnaldo Momigliano Best Article in History Prize

2004
Jack Goldstone, “Efflorescence and Economic Growth in World History: Rethinking the ‘Rise of the West’ and the Industrial Revolution,” Journal of World History 13 (2002): 323–389. “Efflorescence and Economic Growth in World History” meticulously and provocatively explores a number of standard concepts relating to economic expansion and the political hegemony of the so-called West. Persuasively arguing for the total abolition of conventional dichotomies between West and non-West or modern and pre-modern, Professor Goldstone points out that economic change has always been gradual among all societies at all times. Further, he argues that the conventional concept of attaching modernity to the post-industrial phase of Europe obscures the important series of fundamental changes in economy and society that go back as far as the 10th century, not only in Europe but around the globe. Moreover, he convincingly demonstrates that the dichotomous terms overlook the vast economic, political, and social differences within the geographical zones. This essay suggests new titles for the periodization of world history that do not privilege terms such as “modern,” “pre-modern,” “growth,” or “stability.” The relevance of this magisterial article extends to different areas of historical inquiry and as such it promises to energize and revitalize the study and teaching of Western civilization as well as world history.

The Pauline Maier Best Dissertation in American History Prize

2004
Harvey G. Cohen, “Improvising Across the Color Lines: Duke Ellington’s America” (University of Maryland)
Harvey G. Cohen’s dissertation, “Improvising Across the Color Lines: Duke Ellington’s America,” is a masterful blend of cultural, social, and business history which exemplifies the Historical Society’s mission to promote history that is well reasoned, anchored by evidence, integrated, and accessible to the public. This elegantly written biography shows how Ellington skillfully manipulated the marketing of his music to achieve a long, profitable, and varied career as a serious composer and popular musician. Although Ellington never put the politics of race ahead of his music, Cohen convincingly uses Ellington’s character, creativity, and success as a lens for viewing American race relations. We learn that while Ellington celebrated the black American experience in his music, he promoted it (and himself) in a manner that breached racial barriers and undermined 20th-century stereotypes. In the end, Ellington used his fame to create a new image and respectability not only for African-Americans, but also for American music.

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Felix E. Hirsch Travel Grant
Awarded to graduate students for attendance at THS conferences

2004
Scott Marler, Rice University
Barbara Gardenour, Boston University

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A prize of $5,000 named after Donald Kagan, an historian of Ancient Greece.

2002
Liah Greenfeld, The Spirit of Capitalism: Nationalism and Economic Growth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001)

The Spirit of Capitalism is a remarkable piece of work. Greenfeld’s argues that it is a mistake to try to understand the phenomenon of sustained economic growth by studying economic processes and mechanisms purely on their own terms. The how, she argues persuasively, can never explain the why: economic mechanisms “are inert unless put to use by the human will.” The “take-off to sustained growth”—to use Rostow’s famous phrase—cannot take place on its own. The machinery somehow has to be set in motion; the driving force therefore has to come from outside the economic realm, strictly defined; the growth process thus has to be seen as the product of specific historical conditions, and thus needs to be understood in distinctly historical terms. The “spirit behind the matter” is fundamental; that spirit is reflected in the culture of the period. Her focus therefore is not on the economic processes as such, but on the history of ideas—especially economic ideas—and on the sociology of culture. Such a framework enables Greenfeld to make a striking argument. Nationalism, she maintains, was the key factor explaining the emergence of the modern economy. Indeed, the “spirit of capitalism was nationalism. Nationalism was the ethical motive force behind the modern economy of growth.” That “spirit of capitalism” was the “economic expression of the collective competitiveness inherent in nationalism;” moreover, nationalism “being inherently egalitarian,” “necessarily promotes the type of social structure which the modern economy needs to develop.” Liah Greenfeld is University Professor; Professor of Political Science and Sociology at Boston University.
Marc Trachtenberg, UCLA, Chair of the 2002 Kagan Prize Committee

Felix E. Hirsch Travel Grant
Awarded to graduate students for attendance at THS conferences

Felix E. Hirsch was a scholar of European history, a beloved advisor for many students, and an influential interpreter of Germany to Americans and the United States to Germans for over three decades following World War II. He was born in Berlin in 1902, and was educated at Heidelberg University (Dr. Phil., 1923). He served as a political reporter and editor at the Acht-Uhr Abendblatt and Berliner Tageblatt until dismissed by the Nazi regime in 1934. He emigrated to the United States, where he received the BA in Library Science from Columbia University and embarked on a joint career as librarian and professor of history, first at Bard College and then at Trenton State College (now the College of New Jersey). His influence led many of his students to enter careers in public service. Hirsch wrote nearly a hundred articles on twentieth century history, much of which he had experienced first hand, particularly about Gustav Stresemann, the German Chancellor and Foreign Minister of the 1920s, and Theodor Heuss, the First President of the German Federal Republic, both of whom he knew personally. His biography of Stresemann was published for the centennial of the statesman's birth in 1978. Hirsch was a founder of the American Council on Germany in 1952 and lectured in Germany on behalf of the U.S. Government in 1949 and 1954 and held visiting professorships in Karlsruhe and Heidelberg in the 1960s. He received the Commander's Cross of the German Order of Merit in 1973 for his efforts in bettering German-American relations in the aftermath of World War II. He died in 1982. His papers are in the German Intellectual Émigré Collection at the State University of New York at Albany and the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz, Germany.

Best First Book Prize

2001
David Stone, Hammer and Rifle: The Militarization of the Soviet Union, 1926-1933 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000)

An extraordinary piece of Soviet archival investigation, Stone's book answers questions that historians of the early Soviet Union have asked for years regarding the role of military concerns in everything from the Stalin/Bukharin struggle to the nature of the First Five-Year Plan. His examination of the "military-industrial revolution" in the late 1920s and early 1930s reveals a transformation of not only the Soviet economy but also of "the Red Army itself and the political structures that governed the Soviet state." Stone proves himself an adept economic and political as well as military historian as he charts the ways in which military concerns, especially the Manchurian crisis of 1931-1932, led to profound changes in Soviet economic policy and accelerated the concentration of political power in the hands of Josef Stalin. Yet Stone also persuasively demonstrates how the militarization of the Soviet Union created serious problems both in the medium and long term. The concentration on military spending in the 1930s not only diverted investment away from other sectors of the Soviet economy; it also emphasized military production over technological and design improvements. That policy thus left the USSR with stockpiles of obsolete weaponry when World War II broke out. As Stone puts it, "the Soviet Union rearmed for World War II six or seven years too early," and, as a consequence, it suffered enormous setbacks early in the war. In the long term, the "rigid and inflexible economy" that the "military-industrial revolution bequeathed to the Soviet people ultimately undermined the Soviet state itself, destroying that which it was meant to defend." This lucid, impressively documented, and important study reflects Stone's mastery of historical research, analysis, and writing.
Douglas Ambrose, Hamilton College, Chair of the 2001 Best First Book Prize Committee

Best Article Prize

2001
MacGregor Knox, "1 October 1942: Adolf Hitler, Wehrmacht Officer Policy and Social Revolution," The Historical Journal 43 (2000): 801-25.

In describing the transition of the "Prussian-German officer corps from a closed corporation, rank conscious and elitist," into a cadre of Nazis, loyal directly to Hitler, Knox argues that Hitler, not the exigencies of war, dictated the change. Exceedingly well written, Knox's essay describes the perverse erosion of a traditional elite by forces claiming to be socialist, nationalist, and hence modern. As Knox writes, "it was National Socialism's very modernity that endowed it with demonic force."
Deborah Symonds, Drake University, Chair of the 2001 Best Article Prize Committee

		THS Prizes
	PRIZES AWARDED IN 2004 Donald Kagan Best Book in European History Prize Arnaldo Momigliano Article Prize Pauline Maier Best Dissertation in American History Prize Felix E. Hirsch Travel Grant PRIZES AWARDED IN 2001-2002 Donald Kagan Best Book in European History Prize Pauline Maier Best Dissertation in American History Prize Theodore Hamerow Best Dissertation in European History Prize Felix E. Hirsch Travel Grant Article Prize First Book Prize *The Donald Kagan Best Book in European History Prize* 2004 *Ken Alder, The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World* (Free Press, 2002). Ken Alder’s book is deeply empirical in the way the work of historians can and should be. This is a brilliantly written book. One has the clear impression of being in the presence of a first-rate mind. Alder’s focus appears microscopic, as he brings to life two 18th-century scientists by means of their private correspondence. Thanks to the author’s sure-footed mining of previously ignored archival sources, he bares the characters of the two men in a way that brings vivisection to mind. At the same time, he makes the reader experience the hair-raising difficulties his heroes encounter as they traverse Europe from the North Sea to the Mediterranean while the world is going up in flames, with the armies of the French Revolution on the march. Jerry Z. Muller, The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Modern European Thought (Knopf, 2002). Muller’s book covers an impressive range of material linked together in an elegant and illuminating way. It is, in our judgment, an original, fair-minded, lucid, and eloquent work. It deals incisively with problems that not only emerged in the past but remain with us today. Writing about economic theorists as different from each other as Voltaire, Hegel, Marx, or Schumpeter, Muller places each of them firmly in their time and place, and he manages the extraordinary feat of making even abstruse and difficult writers such as Georg Simmel comprehensible. < TOP > The Arnaldo Momigliano Best Article in History Prize 2004** Jack Goldstone, “Efflorescence and Economic Growth in World History: Rethinking the ‘Rise of the West’ and the Industrial Revolution,” Journal of World History 13 (2002): 323–389. “Efflorescence and Economic Growth in World History” meticulously and provocatively explores a number of standard concepts relating to economic expansion and the political hegemony of the so-called West. Persuasively arguing for the total abolition of conventional dichotomies between West and non-West or modern and pre-modern, Professor Goldstone points out that economic change has always been gradual among all societies at all times. Further, he argues that the conventional concept of attaching modernity to the post-industrial phase of Europe obscures the important series of fundamental changes in economy and society that go back as far as the 10th century, not only in Europe but around the globe. Moreover, he convincingly demonstrates that the dichotomous terms overlook the vast economic, political, and social differences within the geographical zones. This essay suggests new titles for the periodization of world history that do not privilege terms such as “modern,” “pre-modern,” “growth,” or “stability.” The relevance of this magisterial article extends to different areas of historical inquiry and as such it promises to energize and revitalize the study and teaching of Western civilization as well as world history. < TOP > The Pauline Maier Best Dissertation in American History Prize 2004 Harvey G. Cohen, “Improvising Across the Color Lines: Duke Ellington’s America” (University of Maryland) Harvey G. Cohen’s dissertation, “Improvising Across the Color Lines: Duke Ellington’s America,” is a masterful blend of cultural, social, and business history which exemplifies the Historical Society’s mission to promote history that is well reasoned, anchored by evidence, integrated, and accessible to the public. This elegantly written biography shows how Ellington skillfully manipulated the marketing of his music to achieve a long, profitable, and varied career as a serious composer and popular musician. Although Ellington never put the politics of race ahead of his music, Cohen convincingly uses Ellington’s character, creativity, and success as a lens for viewing American race relations. We learn that while Ellington celebrated the black American experience in his music, he promoted it (and himself) in a manner that breached racial barriers and undermined 20th-century stereotypes. In the end, Ellington used his fame to create a new image and respectability not only for African-Americans, but also for American music. < TOP > *Felix E. Hirsch Travel Grant* Awarded to graduate students for attendance at THS conferences 2004 Scott Marler, Rice University Barbara Gardenour, Boston University < TOP > *The Donald Kagan Best Book in European History Prize* A prize of $5,000 named after Donald Kagan, an historian of Ancient Greece. 2002 *Liah Greenfeld, The Spirit of Capitalism: Nationalism and Economic Growth* (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001)** The Spirit of Capitalism is a remarkable piece of work. Greenfeld’s argues that it is a mistake to try to understand the phenomenon of sustained economic growth by studying economic processes and mechanisms purely on their own terms. The how, she argues persuasively, can never explain the why: economic mechanisms “are inert unless put to use by the human will.” The “take-off to sustained growth”—to use Rostow’s famous phrase—cannot take place on its own. The machinery somehow has to be set in motion; the driving force therefore has to come from outside the economic realm, strictly defined; the growth process thus has to be seen as the product of specific historical conditions, and thus needs to be understood in distinctly historical terms. The “spirit behind the matter” is fundamental; that spirit is reflected in the culture of the period. Her focus therefore is not on the economic processes as such, but on the history of ideas—especially economic ideas—and on the sociology of culture. Such a framework enables Greenfeld to make a striking argument. Nationalism, she maintains, was the key factor explaining the emergence of the modern economy. Indeed, the “spirit of capitalism was nationalism. Nationalism was the ethical motive force behind the modern economy of growth.” That “spirit of capitalism” was the “economic expression of the collective competitiveness inherent in nationalism;” moreover, nationalism “being inherently egalitarian,” “necessarily promotes the type of social structure which the modern economy needs to develop.” Liah Greenfeld is University Professor; Professor of Political Science and Sociology at Boston University. Marc Trachtenberg, UCLA, Chair of the 2002 Kagan Prize Committee < TOP > *The Pauline Maier Best Dissertation in American History Prize* A prize of $1,000 named after Pauline Maier, an historian of early America. 2002 Molly Patrick Rozum, “Grasslands Grown: A Twentieth-Century Sense of Place on North America’s Northern Prairies and Plains” University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2001. In “Grasslands Grown,” Rozum uses collective biography to explore the intimate, personal ways in which the northern grasslands of the United States and Canada shaped the lives of the first generation of European settlers to grow up there. In the process, she seeks to develop a new way of looking at the significance of region in American history and life. Using diaries, personal letters, and even juvenile drawings, Rozum begins with the earliest childhood experiences of her subjects—their encounters with soil, with plants and animals, with the often violent and treacherous weather, and with the ways in which this environment constrained and supported the lives of those who lived on the land. She proceeds to trace her people as they move away from their localities, developing a sense of common connection to others of like experience, forming a concept of the extra-regional “other,” and encountering the local past and the not-quite-past-tokens left by early European explorers, archaeological evidence of aboriginal cultures, and the confined remnants of native peoples themselves. Finally, Rozum follows her generation into maturity, a time when they have come to terms with the impact of their own desires on the prairies. She offers us an environmental history from the personal inside out—an environment as lived experience—and avoids the trap of romanticizing either the land or the people. Rozum explores new ways in which a sense of place shapes how we understand our own lives and those of our subjects. David L. Carlton, Vanderbilt University, Chair of the 2002 Maier Prize Committee < TOP > *The Theodore Hamerow Best Dissertation in European History Prize* A prize of $1,000 named after Theodore Hamerow, an historian of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Germany. 2002 Mark Evan Landsman, “Dictatorship and Demand: East Germany Between Productivism and Consumerism, 1948-1961” Columbia University, 2000. “Dictatorship and Demand” is an unusually well-written dissertation based on ground-breaking research. Landsman leaves an indelible image of one of the defining political and economic experiments of the Cold War era. Situating his work in the context of recent scholarship on the history of consumer culture, but applying its insights in an original fashion to the early experience of one of the crucial battlegrounds of the Cold War, Landsman shows how consumer policy could implicate the survival of the regime itself and sheds significant light both on the events leading to the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 and on the ultimate demise of the East German regime. Based on wide-ranging research in the archives of both the East German state and its ruling Communist Party (SED), the author reconstructs the fascinating debates within the government over how to apply Marxist ideology of production to the novel challenges of the consumer society posed by West Germany. At the same time, he provides the reader with a nuanced glimpse into the frustrations and preoccupations of East German consumers as they emerged from the privations of World War II. In each case, Landsman is able to capture the sheer novelty of the consumer society that emerged across the border in the 1950s and of the conceptual and practical problems it raised for a regime that regarded commerce and consumption with suspicion. Henry C. Clark, Canisius College, Chair of the 2002 Hamerow Prize Committee < TOP > *Felix E. Hirsch Travel Grant* Awarded to graduate students for attendance at THS conferences Felix E. Hirsch was a scholar of European history, a beloved advisor for many students, and an influential interpreter of Germany to Americans and the United States to Germans for over three decades following World War II. He was born in Berlin in 1902, and was educated at Heidelberg University (Dr. Phil., 1923). He served as a political reporter and editor at the Acht-Uhr Abendblatt and Berliner Tageblatt until dismissed by the Nazi regime in 1934. He emigrated to the United States, where he received the BA in Library Science from Columbia University and embarked on a joint career as librarian and professor of history, first at Bard College and then at Trenton State College (now the College of New Jersey). His influence led many of his students to enter careers in public service. Hirsch wrote nearly a hundred articles on twentieth century history, much of which he had experienced first hand, particularly about Gustav Stresemann, the German Chancellor and Foreign Minister of the 1920s, and Theodor Heuss, the First President of the German Federal Republic, both of whom he knew personally. His biography of Stresemann was published for the centennial of the statesman's birth in 1978. Hirsch was a founder of the American Council on Germany in 1952 and lectured in Germany on behalf of the U.S. Government in 1949 and 1954 and held visiting professorships in Karlsruhe and Heidelberg in the 1960s. He received the Commander's Cross of the German Order of Merit in 1973 for his efforts in bettering German-American relations in the aftermath of World War II. He died in 1982. His papers are in the German Intellectual Émigré Collection at the State University of New York at Albany and the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz, Germany. 2002 W. Brian Newsome David Ulbrich < TOP > Best First Book Prize 2001 David Stone, Hammer and Rifle: The Militarization of the Soviet Union, 1926-1933 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000) An extraordinary piece of Soviet archival investigation, Stone's book answers questions that historians of the early Soviet Union have asked for years regarding the role of military concerns in everything from the Stalin/Bukharin struggle to the nature of the First Five-Year Plan. His examination of the "military-industrial revolution" in the late 1920s and early 1930s reveals a transformation of not only the Soviet economy but also of "the Red Army itself and the political structures that governed the Soviet state." Stone proves himself an adept economic and political as well as military historian as he charts the ways in which military concerns, especially the Manchurian crisis of 1931-1932, led to profound changes in Soviet economic policy and accelerated the concentration of political power in the hands of Josef Stalin. Yet Stone also persuasively demonstrates how the militarization of the Soviet Union created serious problems both in the medium and long term. The concentration on military spending in the 1930s not only diverted investment away from other sectors of the Soviet economy; it also emphasized military production over technological and design improvements. That policy thus left the USSR with stockpiles of obsolete weaponry when World War II broke out. As Stone puts it, "the Soviet Union rearmed for World War II six or seven years too early," and, as a consequence, it suffered enormous setbacks early in the war. In the long term, the "rigid and inflexible economy" that the "military-industrial revolution bequeathed to the Soviet people ultimately undermined the Soviet state itself, destroying that which it was meant to defend." This lucid, impressively documented, and important study reflects Stone's mastery of historical research, analysis, and writing. Douglas Ambrose, Hamilton College, Chair of the 2001 Best First Book Prize Committee < TOP > Best Article Prize 2001 *MacGregor Knox, "1 October 1942: Adolf Hitler, Wehrmacht Officer Policy and Social Revolution," The Historical Journal* 43 (2000): 801-25.** In describing the transition of the "Prussian-German officer corps from a closed corporation, rank conscious and elitist," into a cadre of Nazis, loyal directly to Hitler, Knox argues that Hitler, not the exigencies of war, dictated the change. Exceedingly well written, Knox's essay describes the perverse erosion of a traditional elite by forces claiming to be socialist, nationalist, and hence modern. As Knox writes, "it was National Socialism's very modernity that endowed it with demonic force." Deborah Symonds, Drake University, Chair of the 2001 Best Article Prize Committee < TOP >

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