ECW Awards

The Emerging Civil War Award for Service in Civil War Public History

Recognizes the work of an individual or organization that has made a significant impact on the field of public history in a way that better helps the general public connect with America’s defining event.

2024 Gordon L. Jones
2023 Civil War Trails, Inc.
2022 American Battlefield Trust
2021 Gary W. Gallagher
2020 Dave Ruth
2019 John Coski
2018 D. P. Newton
2017 Dave Roth
2016 Ted Alexander

From left: ECW Editor-in-Chief Chris Mackowski stands with Drew Gruber, executive director, and Richard Lewis, secretary, of Civil War Trails, Inc.

The Emerging Civil War Book Award

Presented to the best Civil War book published during the previous calendar year.

2024 Winner: I Dread the Thought of the Place: The Battle of Antietam and the End of the Maryland Campaign by D. Scott Hartwig (Johns Hopkins University Press)
2023 Winner: Gettysburg’s Southern Front: Opportunity and Failure at Richmond by Hampton Newsome (Univ. Press of Kansas)
2023 Finalist: Ways and Means: Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War by Roger Lowenstein (Penguin)
2022 Winner: Meade at Gettysburg: A Study in Command by Kent Masterson Brown (UNC Press)
2022 Finalist: Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause by Ty Seidule (St. Martin’s Press)
2021 Winner: The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West by Megan Kate Nelson (Scribner)
2021 Finalists: The Union Assaults on Vicksburg: Grant Attacks Pemberton, May 17-22, 1863 by Timothy B. Smith (Univ. Press of Kansas); A Republic in the Ranks: Loyalty and Dissent in the Army of the Potomac by Zachery Fry (UNC Press)
2020 Winner: The Fight for the Old North State: The Civil War in North Carolina, January – May 1864 by Hampton Newsome (Univ. Press of Kansas)
2020 Finalists: Conquered by Larry Daniels (UNC Press); Bodies in Blue by Sarah Handley-Cousins (Univ. of Georgia Press)
2019 Winner: A Campaign of Giants: The Battle for Petersburg by A. Wilson Greene (UNC Press)
2019 Finalists: Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight (Simon and Schuster); Fighting Means Killing: Civil War Soldiers and the Nature of Combat by Jonathan M. Steplyk (Univ. Press of Kansas)
2018 Winner: On to Petersburg: Grant and Lee, June 4-15, 1864 by Gordon Rhea (LSU Press)
2018 Finalists: Inglorious Passages: Noncombat Deaths in the Civil War by Brian Steel Wills (Univ. Press of Kansas); The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant: The Complete Annotated Edition, edited by John F. Marszalek (Harvard Univ. Press)
2017 Winner: Grant Invades Tennessee: The 1862 Battles for Forts Henry and Donelson by Timothy B. Smith (Univ. Press of Kansas)
2017 Finalists: Gathering to Save a Nation: Lincoln & The Union’s War Governors by Stephen D. Engle (UNC Press); Braxton Bragg: The Most Hated Man in the Confederacy by Earl J. Hess (UNC Press)