Tom Watson Brown Book Award

The $50,000 Tom Watson Brown Book Award is presented annually by the Watson-Brown Foundation and the Society of Civil War Historians to the author or authors of the best book “on the causes, conduct, and effects, broadly defined, of the Civil War,” published in the preceding year.

Each year Tad Brown, president of the Watson-Brown Foundation, presents the Tom Watson Brown Book Award at a special banquet during the annual meeting of the Southern Historical Association.

Call for 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.

Congratulations to Michael Vorenberg, Winner of the 2026 Tom Watson Brown Book Award

The Society of Civil War Historians and the Watson-Brown Foundation are proud to announce that Dr. Michael Vorenberg is the recipient of the 2026 Tom Watson Brown Book Award. Dr. Vorenberg earned the award for Lincoln’s Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War, which was published in 2025 by Alfred A. Knopf Press. Dr. Vorenberg is a professor of history at Brown University.

In making its selection, the prize committee stated: “Lincoln’s Peace is a model of the historian’s craft…. He tackles a deceptively difficult question — “When did the Civil War end?” — and, by casting a wide net in terms of sources, historical actors, and geographical scope, powerfully challenges our assumptions about when, where, and how the conflict concluded.” In answering this question, “Lincoln’s Peace truly challenges readers: to rethink old assumptions, to question received wisdom, and to embrace the uncertainties that confronted people for whom our past was an unknowable future.”

The Watson-Brown Foundation funds the $50,000 award in honor of Tom Watson Brown, a dedicated student of the Civil War. The prize jury included Michael E. Woods, University of Tennessee, Knoxville (chair), Laura F. Edwards, Princeton University, Kristen T. Oertel, University of Tulsa, and Tad Brown, President of the Watson-Brown Foundation, Inc.

Past Winners

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

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

2023 – R. Isabella Morales,  Happy Dreams of Liberty: An American Family in Slavery and Freedom (Oxford University Press, 2022). Read Morales’s Tom Watson Brown acceptance speech on Project Muse.

2022 – Sebastian Page, Black Resettlement and the American Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2021). Read Page’s Tom Watson Brown acceptance speech on Project Muse.

2021 – Thavolia Glymph, The Women’s Fight: The Civil War’s Battles for Home, Freedom, and Nation (UNC Press, 2020). The Women’s Fight also won the Albert J. Beveridge Award and Joan Kelly Memorial Prize, both from the American Historical Association; the Civil War and Reconstruction Book Award, Darlene Clark Hine Award, and Mary Nickliss Prize, all from the Organization of American Historians; the John Nau Book Prize in American Civil War Era History, from the John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History at the University of Virginia; and the Julia Cherry Spruill Prize, Southern Association for Women Historians. Read Glymph’s Tom Watson Brown acceptance speech on Project Muse.

2020 – Thomas J. Brown, Civil War Monuments and the Militarization of America (UNC Press, 2019). Read Brown’s Tom Watson Brown acceptance speech on Project Muse.

2019 – Amy Murrell Taylor, Embattled Freedom: Journeys through The Civil War’s Slave Refugee Camps (UNC Press, 2018). Embattled Freedom also received the Avery O. Craven Award and the Merle Curti Award in social history, both from the Organization of American Historians. In addition, it was awarded the John Nau Book Prize in American Civil War era history from the University of Virginia’s John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History. Read Taylor’s Tom Watson Brown acceptance speech on Project Muse.

2018 – Andrew F. Lang, In the Wake of War: Military Occupation, Emancipation, and Civil War America (LSU Press, 2017). Read Lang’s Tom Watson Brown acceptance speech on Project Muse.

2017 – Christopher Phillips, The Rivers Ran Backward: The Civil War and the Remaking of the American Middle Border (Oxford University Press, 2016). The Rivers Ran Backward also received the Midwestern History Association’s Jon Gjerde Prize and the Ohio Academy of History’s Distinguished Book Award. Read Phillips’s Tom Watson Brown acceptance speech on Project Muse.

2016 – Earl J. Hess, Civil War Infantry Tactics: Training, Combat, and Small-Unit Effectiveness (LSU Press, 2015). Read Hess’s Tom Watson Brown acceptance speech on Project Muse.

2015 – Shauna Devine, Learning from the Wounded: The Civil War and the Rise of American Medical Science (UNC Press, 2014). Learning from the Wounded also won the Wiley-Silver Prize from The Center for Civil War Research, University of Mississippi. Read Devine’s Tom Watson Brown acceptance speech on Project Muse.

2014 – Ari Kelman, A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling Over the Memory of Sand Creek (Harvard University Press, 2013). A Misplaced Massacre also received the Bancroft Prize from Columbia University and the Avery O. Craven Award from the Organization of American Historians, both in 2014. It was awarded the Antoinette Foster Downing Prize by the Society of Architectural Historians in 2015. Read Kelman’s Tom Watson Brown acceptance speech on Project Muse.

2013 – John Fabian Witt, Lincoln’s Code: the Laws of War in American History (Simon and Schuster, 2012). Lincoln’s Code also earned the Bancroft Prize from Columbia University and the Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association, both in 2013. It was a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for history, as well. Read Witt’s Tom Watson Brown acceptance speech on Project Muse.

2012 – Gary Gallagher, The Union War (Harvard University Press, 2011). The Union War also received the Eugene Feit Award in Civil War Studies from the New York Military Affairs Symposium in 2011 and the Daniel M. and Marilyn W. Laney Prize from the Austin, Texas Civil War Round Table in 2012. Read Gallagher’s Tom Watson Brown acceptance speech on Project Muse.

2011 – Mark Geiger, Financial Fraud and Guerrilla Violence in Missouri’s Civil War, 1861-1865 (Yale University Press, 2010). Financial Fraud and Guerrilla Violence in Missouri’s Civil War also received the Francis B. Simkins Prize from the Southern Historical Association and earned an Honorable Mention for the Lincoln Prize, awarded by Gettysburg College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, in 2011. Read Geiger’s Tom Watson Brown acceptance speech on Project Muse.

2010 – Daniel Sutherland, A Savage Conflict: the Decisive Role of Guerillas in the American Civil War (UNC Press, 2009). A Savage Conflict also earned the Jefferson Davis Book Award from the American Civil War Museum in 2009 and the Distinguished Book Award from the Society for Military History in 2010.