This Year's Awards Ceremony

This year's awards ceremony was held on May 7, 2007, in New York City. The annual Parkman and Nevins prizes and the biennial Cooper prize were awarded.

2007 SAH Awards Ceremony

Nevins winner Jennifer Anderson, Parkman winner Sir John Elliott, SAH President Eric Foner, and Cooper winner Thomas Mullen

J. H. Elliott's Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492–1830, published by Yale University Press in 2006, is a most impressive piece of scholarship that delivers what many studies promise but few achieve: excellent comparative analysis within a transatlantic context. Professor Elliott examines the establishment, growth, and fracturing of the British and Spanish empires in the Western Hemisphere, drawn from an enormous body of evidence, to explore political, economic, religious, cultural, and other dimensions of the sprawling topic. The reciprocal influences of European traditions and realities on the ground in the Americas, as well as the crucial and sometimes capricious roles of individuals, stand out in elegantly crafted narrative. In its ambitious scope, attention to style, and successful execution, Empires of the Atlantic World richly deserves to be honored with a prize named after Francis Parkman. Read acceptance speech >>

In The Last Town on Earth, A Novel, published by Random House in 2006, Thomas Mullen gives a stunning portrait of an American community struggling under incredible pressure from outside events and a way of seeing into the lives of individuals facing the consequences of a decision to isolate themselves from the outside world during the 1918 flu epidemic. Writing with empathy for characters caught up under the impact of the Great War and the global flu epidemic, the two events merge and drive the narrative along with a momentum that culminates in an unforeseen tragedy of Dreiser-like realism. It is a novel that gives readers a sense of place and meaning. Altogether it is a remarkable achievement for an author, let alone a first novel. Read acceptance speech >>

Jennifer Anderson's "Nature's Currency: The Atlantic Mahogany Trade, 1720–1830" (New York University, 2006) is an outstanding dissertation on every ground: elegantly written, effectively organized, and deeply, indefatigably researched. It breaks new ground in our understanding of the complex interplay among slaves, proprietors in mahogany-producing regions in the British West Indies and the Spanish-claimed regions of Central America around the Bay of Honduras, and consumers in the Atlantic world. It is rare, indeed, to have a densely researched monograph so deftly integrate economic, labor, and cultural history into a fascinating global portrait of interlocking human experience. Read acceptance speech >>