The George Washington Book Prize

The George Washington Book Prize was instituted in 2005 and is awarded annually to the best book on America's founding era. It is administered by Washington College’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience and sponsored by Washington College in partnership with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and George Washington’s Mount Vernon.

At $50,000, the George Washington Book Prize is one of the largest book awards in the United States.

The 2008 George Washington Book Prize was awarded to Marcus Rediker for The Slave Ship: A Human History (Viking, 2007). Previous winners have included Ron Chernow in 2005 for Alexander Hamilton; Stacy Schiff in 2006 for A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America; and Charles Rappleye in 2007 for Sons of Providence: The Brown Brothers, The Slave Trade, and the American Revolution.

2008

Winner: Marcus Rediker's The Slave Ship: A Human History (Viking).

Finalists

Woody Holton's Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution (Hill and Wang)

Jon Latimer's 1812: War with America (Belknap/Harvard)

2007
Winner: Charles Rappleye, Sons of Providence: The Brown Brothers, the Slave Trade, and the American Revolution (Simon & Schuster).

Finalists:

Francois Furstenberg, In the Name of the Father (Penguin)
Catherine Allgor, A Perfect Union (Henry Holt)

2006
Winner: Stacy Schiff , A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America (Henry Holt).

Finalists:

Edward Lengel, General George Washington: A Military Life (Random House)
Stanley Weintraub, America's Battle for Freedom, Britain's Quagmire: 1775-1783 (Free Press)

2005 – Inaugural Year

Winner: Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton (Penguin Press).
Finalists:

Rhys Isaac, Landon Carter's Uneasy Kingdom (Oxford University Press)
Gordon Wood, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin (Penguin)