Alan Taylor, the writer of “American Republics: A Continental Historical past of the USA, 1783-1850,” has been named the winner of the New-York Historic Society’s 2022 Barbara and David Zalaznick Guide Prize, which is awarded annually for one of the best work of American historical past or biography.
The e-book, printed by W.W. Norton, takes a capacious view of the interval between the top of the American Revolution and Congress’s failed efforts to cross compromise payments over slavery to stave off the looming Civil Warfare. It seems past the acquainted nice males and geographical boundaries, depicting the increasing nation as an “always-imperiled” nation constructed on “an unstable basis of rival areas and an ambiguous Structure.”
David S. Reynolds, reviewing the e-book final yr in The New York Occasions Guide Evaluate, praised it as an “expansive overview” that keenly conveys the interior divisions and animosities that discover echoes as we speak.
“Many histories of this necessary interregnum interval have been written, however none emphasizes the fragility of the American experiment as strongly as Taylor’s e-book does,” he wrote.
Taylor, a professor on the College of Virginia, is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for historical past. His earlier two books, “American Colonies” and “American Revolutions,” which took a equally wide-angled and nuanced view of the nation’s beginnings, have been scholarly touchstones within the escalating political battles over American historical past.
His work could also be quick on sunny paeans to the knowledge of the founders. However in an interview with The Occasions final yr, Taylor mentioned that in his class lectures he all the time tries to attach again to the founders’ perception that democracy was a dwelling organism which, if not consistently defended by engaged residents, would “dissolve.”
“The founders had a really clear understanding of that,” he mentioned. “Now we have a a lot much less clear understanding.”
The e-book prize, which will likely be given at a non-public ceremony in April, comes with an award of $50,000. Earlier winners have included Jill Lepore, Jane Kamensky, Eric Foner and Gordon S. Wooden.
