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Scholar of the Early Republic Wins American History Book Prize

Alan Taylor, the author of “American Republics: A Continental History of the United States, 1783-1850,” has been named the winner of the New-York Historical Society’s 2022 Barbara and David Zalaznick Book Prize, which is awarded each year for the best work of American history or biography. Read more

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Megan Marshall has won this year’s BIO Award

Last week, the Biographers International Organization (BIO) announced Megan Marshall as the winner of its 13th annual BIO Award, bestowed annually “to a distinguished colleague who has made major contributions to the advancement of the art and craft of biography.” Read more

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Nine decades later, W.E.B. Du Bois’s work faces familiar criticisms

“Black Reconstruction,” published against a backdrop of violence and segregation, met with a vitriolic reception. White writers leveled sharp-tongued critiques. Black journalists assessed the work favorably but with reservations. Despite the early criticism, over time “Black Reconstruction” came to be recognized as a towering analysis of American culture and an important work of history. Nonetheless, the book’s contribution to the understanding of American racism is, nearly 90 years after its publication, still subject to stale objections that echo those heard when it first hit bookstore shelves. Read more

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The Man Who Hated Women: Sex, Censorship, and Civil Liberties in the Gilded Age

In this important work of biographical history, novelist Sohn traces the career of Anthony Comstock (1844-1915), special agent to the U.S. Post Office and secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. For more than 40 years, Comstock, a deeply Christian dry goods seller from Connecticut, harassed and imprisoned many of the important pioneers in the birth control movement. Read more

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Republic of Detours: How the New Deal Paid Broke Writers to Rediscover America

…a dynamic and discriminating cultural history that speaks to both readers who know something about the project and those who don’t. Like the American Guides these Depression-era writers worked on, Borchert’s book teems with colorful characters, scenic byways and telling anecdotes; his own writing style is full of “verve” — the much prized quality that so many of the guides themselves possessed. Read more

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