Bancroft Prize Winners

I have just managed to clear the deck a bit, and just in time to read about this year's winners of the Bancroft Prize. They are Thomas G. Andrews, Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press), Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf); and Pekka Hämäläinen, The Comanche Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press). I must confess that the only one I have read is Faust's book, and I was quite impressed. Her's is a powerful and beautifully written treatment of how the war changed the meaning of and the rituals surrounding death in American culture. Now I have to check out the other two.