Robert H. Ferrell Book Prize

This prize is designed to reward distinguished scholarship in the history of American foreign relations, broadly defined. The prize of $1,000 is awarded annually. The Ferrell Prize was established to honor Robert H. Ferrell, professor of diplomatic history at Indiana University from 1953 to 1990, by his former students.

Eligibility: The Ferrell Prize recognizes any book beyond the first monograph by the author. To be considered, a book must deal with the history of American foreign relations, broadly defined. Biographies of statesmen and diplomats are eligible. General surveys, autobiographies, or editions of essays and documents are not eligible. Nominations for the 2025 prize must have been published in 2024.

Procedures: Books may be nominated by the author, the publisher, or any member of SHAFR. Three copies of the book must be submitted. The award is announced during the SHAFR annual conference.

To nominate a book published in 2024 for the 2025 prize:

Send a letter of nomination to [email protected]

In addition, send a copy of the book being nominated to each of the committee members:

Marc Gallicchio
Department of History/SAC 403
Villanova University
800 Lancaster Avenue
Villanova, PA 19085

Amanda McVety
254 Upham Hall; 100 Bishop Circle
History Department
Miami University
Oxford, OH 45056

Kristin Ahlberg
2943 Sheridan Blvd
Lincoln, NE 68502

Books may be sent anytime but must arrive by February 1, 2025

Robert H. Ferrell Book Prize Recent Winners:

  • 2024 Erik Scott, Defectors: How the Illicit Flight of Soviet Citizens Built the Borders of the Cold War
  • 2023 Elisabeth Leake, Afghan Crucible: The Soviet Invasion and the Making of Modern Afghanistan
  • 2022 Mark Atwood Lawrence, The End of Ambition: The United States and the Third World in the Vietnam Era 
  • 2021 Samuel Zipp, The Idealist: Wendell Wilkie’s Wartime Quest to Build One World.
  • 2020 Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States
  • 2019 Sarah B. Snyder, From Selma to Moscow: How Human Rights Activists Transformed U.S. Foreign Policy
  • 2018 Nathan J. Citino, Envisioning the Arab Future: Modernization in U.S.-Arab Relations, 1945-1967
  • 2017 Nancy Mitchell, Jimmy Carter in Africa: Race and the Cold War
  • 2016 Madeline Y. Hsu, The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril Became the Model Minority
  • 2015 Frank Ninkovich, The Global Republic: America’s Inadvertent Rise to World Power
  • 2014 Gary Bass, The Blood Telegram:  Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide
  • 2013 Frank Costigliola, Roosevelt’s Lost Alliances: How Personal Politics Helped Start the Cold War
  • 2012 John Lewis Gaddis, George F. Kennan: An American Life
  • 2011 Nick Cullather, The Hungry World: America’s Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia
  • 2010 Mary E. Sarotte, 1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe
  • 2009 George Herring, From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776
  • 2008 James F. Goode, Negotiating for the Past: Archaeology, Nationalism, and Diplomacy in the Middle East, 1919-1941.
  • 2007 Robert L. Beisner, Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War
  • 2006 Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan
  • 2005 Kenton J. Clymer, The United States and Cambodia
  • 2004 William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era
  • 2003 Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976
  • 2000 Marc Gallicchio, The African American Encounter with Japan and China: Black Internationalism in Asia, 1895-1945
  • 1999 Emily Rosenberg, Financial Missionaries to the World: The Politics and Culture of Dollar Diplomacy, 1900-1930
  • 1998 Jeffrey Kimball, Nixon's Vietnam War
  • 1997 Robert Schulzinger, A Time for War: The United States and Vietnam, 1941-1975
  • 1995 Norman Saul, Concord and Conflict: The United States and Russia, 1867-1914
  • 1994 John Lamberton Harper, American Visions of Europe: Franklin D. Roosevelt, George F. Kennan, and Dean G. Acheson
  • 1993 no winner
  • 1992 Mel Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War
  • 1991 David Anderson, Trapped By Success: The Eisenhower Administration and Vietnam, 1953-1961; Diane Kunz, The Economic Diplomacy of the Suez Crisis