The John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History at the University of Virginia is pleased to name J. Matthew Gallman's Defining Duty in the Civil War: Personal Choice, Popular Culture, and the Union Home Front (University of North Carolina Press, 2015) as the winner of the 2016 Bobbie and John Nau Book Prize in American Civil War Era History. A pioneering scholar of Civil War social and cultural history, Gallman examines a wide range of wartime stories, poems, political cartoons, novels, pamphlets, and other printed materials to show how men and women on the Union home front struggled to delineate their patriotic obligations, and grappled with issues such as conscription, cowardice, and profiteering. The judging committee (Elizabeth R. Varon, Joseph T. Glatthaar, and Jonathan W. White) chose Defining Duty unanimously, finding it to be the most original and compelling of the entries in a very strong pool of titles for this year. The prize carries with it a $25,000 award and will be conferred at a dinner at UVA in the fall of 2016.