Book of the Year AwardThe 2018 award deadline has passed; the winner will be announced during the summer. The American Journalism Historians Association Book of the Year Award recognizes the best book in journalism history or mass media history published during the previous calendar year. For the 2018 award, the book must have been granted a first-time copyright in 2017. Once the book award coordinator receives materials, three judges read each book. A decision is made by July 15 based on an expanded instrument that has been updated and fine-tuned each year. AJHA recognizes the winner at its annual convention, where the author presents a discussion of his/her book. The 2018 winner should bring books to the event in Salt Lake City and be prepared to sell and sign them. Entrants should submit four copies of their books to: Aimee Edmondson Questions? Contact Book Award Coordinator Aimee Edmondson. |
Thomas Hrach received the 2017 Book of the Year Award for “The Riot Report and the News: How the Kerner Commission Changed Media Coverage of Black America” (UMass Press, 2016). Read about his recognition. |
Past Winners
| 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 |