Phi Beta Kappa Book Awards: Ralph Waldo Emerson Award

The Phi Beta Kappa Book Awards recognize outstanding contributions to literature, science, and intellectual life.

NonfictionAward

Winners: 65
Finalists: 0
Shortlisted: 0
Longlisted: 0
First year: 1960
Latest year: 2025
Books: 65

Deadline

Not yet sourced

Prize amount

Not yet sourced

Criteria / coverage

Active years represented: 1960-present. Covers winners listed on the official Ralph Waldo Emerson Award past-winners page.

Source coverage

100%

Sourced records

65 of 65

Official site

Open source

Submission info

Open source

Prize history

The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins

Stefanos Geroulanos

2025

Result

Winner

Imprint

Liveright

Time's Echo: The Second World War, The Holocaust, and The Music of Remembrance

Jeremy Eichler

2024

Result

Winner

Imprint

Knopf

Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: The Reporters Who Took on a World at War

Deborah Cohen

2023

Result

Winner

Imprint

Random House

All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake

Tiya Miles

2022

Result

Winner

Imprint

Random House

South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War

Alice Baumgartner

2021

Result

Winner

Imprint

Basic Books

Policing the Open Road: How Cars Transformed American Freedom

Sarah Seo

2020

Result

Winner

Imprint

Harvard University Press

The Known Citizen: A History of Privacy in Modern America

Sarah E. Igo

2019

Result

Winner

Imprint

Harvard University Press

Greater Gotham: A History of New York City from 1898 to 1919

Mike Wallace

2018

Result

Winner

Imprint

Oxford University Press

From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America

Elizabeth Hinton

2017

Result

Winner

Imprint

Harvard University Press

The Murder of William of Norwich: The Origins of the Blood Libel in Medieval Europe

E.M. Rose

2016

Result

Winner

Imprint

Oxford University Press

The Parthenon Enigma

Joan Breton Connelly

2015

Result

Winner

Imprint

Knopf

Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition

David Nirenberg

2014

Result

Winner

Imprint

W. W. Norton

Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis

Timothy Egan

2013

Result

Winner

Imprint

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Armies of Heaven: The First Crusade and the Quest for Apocalypse

Jay Rubenstein

2012

Result

Winner

Imprint

Basic Books

Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin

Timothy Snyder

2011

Result

Winner

Imprint

Basic Books

Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy

Susan M. Reverby

2010

Result

Winner

Imprint

University of North Carolina Press

The Book of Calamities: Five Questions About Suffering and Its Meaning

Peter Trachtenberg

2009

Result

Winner

Imprint

Little, Brown

Muhammad's Grave: Death Rites and the Making of Islamic Society

Leor Halevi

2008

Result

Winner

Imprint

Columbia University Press

Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World

David Brion Davis

2007

Result

Winner

Imprint

Oxford University Press

American Curiosity: Cultures of Natural History in the Colonial British and Atlantic World

Susan Scott Parrish

2006

Result

Winner

Imprint

University of North Carolina Press

Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany

Isabel Hull

2005

Result

Winner

Imprint

Cornell University Press

The End of the Soul

Jennifer Michael Hecht

2004

Result

Winner

Imprint

Columbia University Press

The Eye of the Lynx: Galileo, His Friends, and the Beginnings of Modern Natural History

David Freedberg

2003

Result

Winner

Imprint

University of Chicago Press

Ermengard of Narbonne and the World of the Troubadours

Fredric L. Cheyette

2002

Result

Winner

Imprint

Cornell University Press

Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Search for Sacred Art

Debora Silverman

2001

Result

Winner

Imprint

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The Holocaust in American Life

Peter Novick

2000

Result

Winner

Imprint

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

A History of Madness in Sixteenth-Century Germany

H.C. Erik Midelfort

1999

Result

Winner

Imprint

Stanford University Press

Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity

Steven B. Smith

1997

Result

Winner

Imprint

Yale University Press

Codex Telleriano-Remensis: Ritual, Divination, and History in a Pictorial Aztec Manuscript

Eloise Quinones Keber

1996

Result

Winner

Imprint

University of Texas Press

The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 220-1336

Caroline Walker Bynum

1995

Result

Winner

Imprint

Columbia University Press

W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919

David Levering Lewis

1994

Result

Winner

Imprint

Henry Holt

Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States

Theda Skocpol

1993

Result

Winner

Imprint

Harvard University Press

The Radicalism of the American Revolution

Gordon S. Wood

1992

Result

Winner

Imprint

Knopf

In Search of Human Nature: The Decline and Revival of Darwinism in American Social Thought

Carl N. Degler

1991

Result

Winner

Imprint

Oxford University Press

America's Rome, Volumes I and II

William L. Vance

1990

Result

Winner

Imprint

Yale University Press

The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunication in Early Christianity

Peter Brown

1989

Result

Winner

Imprint

Columbia University Press

The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865–1925

David Montgomery

1988

Result

Winner

Imprint

Cambridge University Press

Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900

Alfred W. Crosby

1987

Result

Winner

Imprint

Cambridge University Press

The World of Thought in Ancient China

Benjamin I. Schwartz T

1986

Result

Winner

Imprint

Belknap Press

The Crucible of Race: Black-White Relations in the American South since Emancipation

Joel Williamson

1985

Result

Winner

Imprint

Oxford University Press

Against the Apocalypse: Responses to Catastrophe in Modern Jewish Culture

David G. Roskies

1984

Result

Winner

Imprint

Harvard University Press

The War Within: From Victorian to Modernist Thought in the South, 1919-1945

Daniel Joseph Singal

1983

Result

Winner

Imprint

University of North Carolina Press

Philosophical Explanations

Robert Nozick

1982

Result

Winner

Imprint

Harvard University Press

White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American & South African History

George M. Fredrickson

1981

Result

Winner

Imprint

Oxford University Press

Utopian Thought in the Western World

Frank E. Manuel, Fritzie P. Manuel

1980

Result

Winner

Imprint

Harvard University Press

The Printing Press As An Agent of Change, Volumes I and II

Elizabeth L. Eisenstein

1979

Result

Winner

Imprint

Cambridge University Press

The Rise of American Philosophy: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1860-1930

Bruce Kuklick

1978

Result

Winner

Imprint

Yale University Press

Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914

Eugen Weber

1977

Result

Winner

Imprint

Stanford University Press

The Great War and Modern Memory

Paul Fussell

1976

Result

Winner

Imprint

Oxford University Press

The Venture of Islam

Marshall G. S. Hodgsonr

1975

Result

Winner

Imprint

University of Chicago Press

Venice: A Maritime Republic

Frederic C. Lane

1974

Result

Winner

Imprint

Johns Hopkins University Press

Reflections on the Causes of Human Misery and upon Certain Proposals to Eliminate Them

Barrington Moore, Jr.

1973

Result

Winner

Imprint

Beacon Press

A Theory of Justice

John Rawls

1972

Result

Winner

Imprint

Belknap Press

American Convictions: Cycles of Public Thought, 1600-1850

Charles A. Barker

1971

Result

Winner

Imprint

J.B. Lippincott

Love and Will

Rollo May

1970

Result

Winner

Imprint

W. W. Norton

Weimar Culture: The Outsider As Insider

Peter Gay

1969

Result

Winner

Imprint

HarperCollins

White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812

Winthrop D. Jordan

1968

Result

Winner

Imprint

University of North Carolina Press

Children of Crisis: A Study of Courage and Fear

Robert Coles

1967

Result

Winner

Imprint

Little, Brown

The Career of Philosophy: From the German Enlightenment to the Age of Darwin

John Herman Randall

1966

Result

Winner

Imprint

Columbia University Press

O Strange New World: American Culture-The Formative Years

Howard Mumford Jones

1965

Result

Winner

Imprint

Viking

Race: The History of An Idea in America

Thomas F. Gossett

1964

Result

Winner

Imprint

Southern Methodist University Press

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life

Richard Hofstadter

1963

Result

Winner

Imprint

Random House

Freedom in the Ancient World

Herbert J. Muller

1962

Result

Winner

Imprint

Harper & Brothers

Mysticism and Philosophy

W. T. Stace

1961

Result

Winner

Imprint

J.B. Lippincott

Philosophy and the Modern World

Albert William Levi

1960

Result

Winner

Imprint

Indiana University Press

Year	Result	Book	Author	Imprint
2025	Winner	The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins	Stefanos Geroulanos	Liveright
2024	Winner	Time's Echo: The Second World War, The Holocaust, and The Music of Remembrance	Jeremy Eichler	Knopf
2023	Winner	Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: The Reporters Who Took on a World at War	Deborah Cohen	Random House
2022	Winner	All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake	Tiya Miles	Random House
2021	Winner	South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War	Alice Baumgartner	Basic Books
2020	Winner	Policing the Open Road: How Cars Transformed American Freedom	Sarah Seo	Harvard University Press
2019	Winner	The Known Citizen: A History of Privacy in Modern America	Sarah E. Igo	Harvard University Press
2018	Winner	Greater Gotham: A History of New York City from 1898 to 1919	Mike Wallace	Oxford University Press
2017	Winner	From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America	Elizabeth Hinton	Harvard University Press
2016	Winner	The Murder of William of Norwich: The Origins of the Blood Libel in Medieval Europe	E.M. Rose	Oxford University Press
2015	Winner	The Parthenon Enigma	Joan Breton Connelly	Knopf
2014	Winner	Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition	David Nirenberg	W. W. Norton
2013	Winner	Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis	Timothy Egan	Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
2012	Winner	Armies of Heaven: The First Crusade and the Quest for Apocalypse	Jay Rubenstein	Basic Books
2011	Winner	Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin	Timothy Snyder	Basic Books
2010	Winner	Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy	Susan M. Reverby	University of North Carolina Press
2009	Winner	The Book of Calamities: Five Questions About Suffering and Its Meaning	Peter Trachtenberg	Little, Brown
2008	Winner	Muhammad's Grave: Death Rites and the Making of Islamic Society	Leor Halevi	Columbia University Press
2007	Winner	Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World	David Brion Davis	Oxford University Press
2006	Winner	American Curiosity: Cultures of Natural History in the Colonial British and Atlantic World	Susan Scott Parrish	University of North Carolina Press
2005	Winner	Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany	Isabel Hull	Cornell University Press
2004	Winner	The End of the Soul	Jennifer Michael Hecht	Columbia University Press
2003	Winner	The Eye of the Lynx: Galileo, His Friends, and the Beginnings of Modern Natural History	David Freedberg	University of Chicago Press
2002	Winner	Ermengard of Narbonne and the World of the Troubadours	Fredric L. Cheyette	Cornell University Press
2001	Winner	Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Search for Sacred Art	Debora Silverman	Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
2000	Winner	The Holocaust in American Life	Peter Novick	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
1999	Winner	A History of Madness in Sixteenth-Century Germany	H.C. Erik Midelfort	Stanford University Press
1997	Winner	Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity	Steven B. Smith	Yale University Press
1996	Winner	Codex Telleriano-Remensis: Ritual, Divination, and History in a Pictorial Aztec Manuscript	Eloise Quinones Keber	University of Texas Press
1995	Winner	The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 220-1336	Caroline Walker Bynum	Columbia University Press
1994	Winner	W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919	David Levering Lewis	Henry Holt
1993	Winner	Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States	Theda Skocpol	Harvard University Press
1992	Winner	The Radicalism of the American Revolution	Gordon S. Wood	Knopf
1991	Winner	In Search of Human Nature: The Decline and Revival of Darwinism in American Social Thought	Carl N. Degler	Oxford University Press
1990	Winner	America's Rome, Volumes I and II	William L. Vance	Yale University Press
1989	Winner	The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunication in Early Christianity	Peter Brown	Columbia University Press
1988	Winner	The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865–1925	David Montgomery	Cambridge University Press
1987	Winner	Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900	Alfred W. Crosby	Cambridge University Press
1986	Winner	The World of Thought in Ancient China	Benjamin I. Schwartz T	Belknap Press
1985	Winner	The Crucible of Race: Black-White Relations in the American South since Emancipation	Joel Williamson	Oxford University Press
1984	Winner	Against the Apocalypse: Responses to Catastrophe in Modern Jewish Culture	David G. Roskies	Harvard University Press
1983	Winner	The War Within: From Victorian to Modernist Thought in the South, 1919-1945	Daniel Joseph Singal	University of North Carolina Press
1982	Winner	Philosophical Explanations	Robert Nozick	Harvard University Press
1981	Winner	White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American & South African History	George M. Fredrickson	Oxford University Press
1980	Winner	Utopian Thought in the Western World	Frank E. Manuel, Fritzie P. Manuel	Harvard University Press
1979	Winner	The Printing Press As An Agent of Change, Volumes I and II	Elizabeth L. Eisenstein	Cambridge University Press
1978	Winner	The Rise of American Philosophy: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1860-1930	Bruce Kuklick	Yale University Press
1977	Winner	Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914	Eugen Weber	Stanford University Press
1976	Winner	The Great War and Modern Memory	Paul Fussell	Oxford University Press
1975	Winner	The Venture of Islam	Marshall G. S. Hodgsonr	University of Chicago Press
1974	Winner	Venice: A Maritime Republic	Frederic C. Lane	Johns Hopkins University Press
1973	Winner	Reflections on the Causes of Human Misery and upon Certain Proposals to Eliminate Them	Barrington Moore, Jr.	Beacon Press
1972	Winner	A Theory of Justice	John Rawls	Belknap Press
1971	Winner	American Convictions: Cycles of Public Thought, 1600-1850	Charles A. Barker	J.B. Lippincott
1970	Winner	Love and Will	Rollo May	W. W. Norton
1969	Winner	Weimar Culture: The Outsider As Insider	Peter Gay	HarperCollins
1968	Winner	White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812	Winthrop D. Jordan	University of North Carolina Press
1967	Winner	Children of Crisis: A Study of Courage and Fear	Robert Coles	Little, Brown
1966	Winner	The Career of Philosophy: From the German Enlightenment to the Age of Darwin	John Herman Randall	Columbia University Press
1965	Winner	O Strange New World: American Culture-The Formative Years	Howard Mumford Jones	Viking
1964	Winner	Race: The History of An Idea in America	Thomas F. Gossett	Southern Methodist University Press
1963	Winner	Anti-Intellectualism in American Life	Richard Hofstadter	Random House
1962	Winner	Freedom in the Ancient World	Herbert J. Muller	Harper & Brothers
1961	Winner	Mysticism and Philosophy	W. T. Stace	J.B. Lippincott
1960	Winner	Philosophy and the Modern World	Albert William Levi	Indiana University Press