For Immediate Release
May 4, 2007
Images Available
Contact: Emily Coleman Dibella
703-799-8607
edibella@mountvernon.org
MOUNT VERNON, Va. – The third annual $50,000 George Washington Book Prize will be awarded at Mount Vernon to the author of the most important book on America’s founding era published in 2006. The black-tie event celebrates the prestigious works of the three finalists with fireworks, candlelit tours of George Washington’s Mansion, and dinner under an elegant tent overlooking the Potomac River on May 22 at 6:30 p.m.
The three finalists, announced on February 22 at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland, include: Catherine Allgor for A Perfect Union: Dolley Madison and the Creation of the American Nation (Holt); François Furstenberg for In the Name of the Father: Washington’s Legacy, Slavery and the Making of a Nation (Penguin); and Charles Rappleye for Sons of Providence: The Brown Brothers, the Slave Trade, and the American Revolution (Simon & Schuster). The books were selected by a three-person jury of prominent American historians that included Richard Bushman of Columbia University, Theodore J. Crackel of the University of Virginia, and Pauline Maier of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The George Washington Book Prize ($50,000) is one of the most generous book awards in the United States, with a monetary prize greater than the Pulitzer Prize for History ($7,500) and the National Book Award ($10,000). Washington College, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York City, and the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association collaborated in 2005 to create the prize, awarded in its inaugural year to Ron Chernow for Alexander Hamilton and last year to Stacy Schiff for A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America.
About the Sponsors of the George Washington Book Prize
Washington College was founded in 1782, the first institution of higher learning established in the new republic. George Washington was not only a principal donor to the college, he also served on the governing board for many years. He received an honorary degree from the college in June 1789, two months after assuming the presidency. The George Washington Book Prize is administered by the College’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, an innovative center for the study of history, culture and politics.
Founded in 1994 by Richard Gilder and Lewis E. Lehrman, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History promotes the study and love of American history. Increasingly national and international in scope, the Institute targets audiences ranging from students to scholars to the general public. It creates history-centered schools and academic research centers, organizes seminars and enrichment programs for educators, partners with school districts to implement Teaching American History grants, produces print and electronic publications and traveling exhibitions, and sponsors lectures by historians. The Institute also funds the Lincoln Prize and Frederick Douglass Book Prize and offers fellowships for scholars to work in history archives, including the Gilder Lehrman Collection.
With its new Donald W. Reynolds Museum and Education Center, the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association has created the equivalent of a presidential library for George Washington. “We want to be the first place people think of when they have a question about George Washington,” noted James Rees, Mount Vernon’s Executive Director. “The George Washington Book Prize is an important component in our aggressive outreach program to historians, teachers, and students.”
# # #
Events, programs, and activities are subject to change.
Public Information: 703-780-2000; 703-799-8697 (TDD); www.mountvernon.org
Since 1860, 80 million visitors have made George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate and Gardens the most popular historic home in America. Through thought-provoking tours, entertaining events, and stimulating educational programs on the Estate and in classrooms across the nation, Mount Vernon strives to preserve George Washington’s place in history as “First in War, First in Peace, and First in the Hearts of His Countrymen.” Mount Vernon is owned and operated by the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, America’s oldest national preservation organization, founded in 1853. A picturesque drive to the southern end of the scenic George Washington Memorial Parkway, Mount Vernon is located just 16 miles from the nation’s capital.
