Book of the Year AwardThe American Journalism Historians Association Book of the Year Award recognizes the best books in journalism history or mass media history published during the previous calendar year. For the 2022 award, the book must have been granted a first-time copyright in 2021. Nominated books may be co-authored, and edited collections will be considered. Authors may self-nominate, and we particularly encourage nominations of books by women, LGBTQ+ and BIPOC authors, as well as books that engage with critical theory as long as the major focus is history. Four finalists will discuss their work at an awards panel at the 2022 American Journalism Historians Association Annual Convention, scheduled for Sept. 27 to Oct. 1 in Memphis, Tennessee. Following the panel presentations, the 2021 AJHA Book Award winner will be announced. Finalists must agree to register for and attend the AJHA conference and present at the panel. To nominate a book for the award, please send the following preliminary materials digitally to Dr. Jane Marcellus at AJHAbookaward@gmail.com no later than Feb. 1, 2022. Please put BOOK NOMINATION in caps on the subject line.
After members of the Book Award Committee evaluate initial proposals, finalists will be invited to submit the complete published book by March 15, 2022. Finalists are welcome to submit PDFs or digital Advance Reader Copies in lieu of hard copies.
Please note that only submissions that follow this process will be accepted.
Questions? Contact Book Award Coordinator Dr. Jane Marcellus at AJHAbookaward@gmail.com. | 
John
Maxwell Hamilton from Louisiana State University received the 2021 Book of the Year Award for "Manipulating the Masses:
Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of American Propaganda." Read about his recognition. |
Past Winners
| 2021 | John Maxwell Hamilton | Manipulating the Masses: Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of American Propaganda |
| 2020 | Mike Conway | Contested Ground: ‘The Tunnel’ and the Struggle over Television News in Cold War America |
| 2019 | Thomas Aiello | The Grapevine of the Black South: The Scott Newspaper Syndicate in the Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement |
| 2018 | Steven Casey | The War Beat, Europe: The American Media at War Against Nazi Germany |
| 2017 | Thomas Hrach | The Riot Report and the News: How the Kerner Commission Changed Media Coverage of Black America |
| 2016 | Leonard Teel | Reporting the Cuban Revolution: How Castro Manipulated American Journalists |
| 2015 | Margot Opdycke Lamme | Public Relations and Religion in American History: Evangelism, Temperance, and Business |
| 2014 | Carol Sue Humphrey | The American Revolution and the Press: The Promise of Independence |
| 2013 | Richard K. Popp | The Holiday Makers: Magazines, Advertising, and Mass Tourism in Postwar America |
| 2012 | Peter Hartshorn | I Have Seen the Future: A Life of Lincoln Steffens |
| 2011 | Mark Feldstein | Poisoning the Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson, and the Rise of Washington's Scandal Culture |
| 2010 | John Maxwell Hamilton | Journalism's Roving Eye: A History of American Foreign Reporting |
| 2009 | Ford Risley | Abolition and the Press: The Moral Struggle Against Slavery |
| 2008 | Mary A. Hamilton | Rising from the Wilderness: J.W. Gitt and His Legendary Newspaper |
| 2007 | Gene Roberts & Hank Klibanoff | The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation |
| 2006 | Laurel Leff | Buried by the Times: The Holocaust and America's Most Important Newspaper |
| 2005 | David Paul Nord | Faith in Reading: Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America |
| 2004 | David Greenberg | Nixon's Shadow: The History of an Image |
| 2003 | Gregory C. Lisby & William F. Mugleston | Someone Had to be Hated: Julian LaRose Harris, A Biography |
| 2002 | Michael Sweeney | Secrets of Victory: The Office of Censorship and the American Press and Radio in World War II |
| 2001 | John C. Hartsock | A History of American Literary Journalism: The Emergence of a Modern Form |