Announcing the 2026 John L. Nau III Book Prize in American Civil War Era History
The John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History at the University of Virginia invites nominations for the 2026 John Nau Book Prize in American Civil War Era History. Titles published in 2025 will be eligible. The $25,000 prize focuses primarily on scholarship devoted to the war itself but is also open to works on the background and consequences of the conflict. Collections of essays or primary documents, works of fiction, and poetry should not be submitted.
Publishers should submit copies of nominated books directly to members of the judging committee by January 15, 2026. The winner will be announced by June 1, 2026, and the award presented at an event sponsored by the Center. For more information, please contact Caroline E. Janney at cej4b@virginia.edu.
Judging Committee
Caroline E. Janney (ex-officio) - Corcoran Department of History, Nau Hall - South Lawn, University of Virginia, PO Box 400180, Charlottesville, VA 22904
John C. Rodrigue (chair) - Department of History, Stonehill College, 320 Washington Street, North Easton, MA 02357
Sarah Handley-Cousins - 554 Park Hall, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260
Kevin Levin - 35 Hilburn Street, Boston, MA 02131
Past Recipients of the Nau Book Prize
2025: Robert K. D. Colby, An Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South (Oxford University Press, 2024)
2024: John C. Rodrigue, Freedom's Crescent: The Civil War and the Destruction of Slavery in the Lower Mississippi Valley (Cambridge University Press, 2023)
2023: Elizabeth D. Leonard, Benjamin Franklin Butler: A Noisy, Fearless Life (University of North Carolina Press, 2022).
2022: Kate Masur, Until Justice Be Done: America's First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction (W. W. Norton & Company, 2021).
2021: Thavolia Glymph, The Women's Fight: The Civil War's Battles for Home, Freedom, and Nation (University of North Carolina Press, 2020).
2020: Joseph P. Reidy, Illusions of Emancipation: The Pursuit of Freedom and Equality in the Twilight of Slavery (University of North Carolina Press, 2019).
2019: Amy M. Taylor, Embattled Freedom: Journeys through the Civil War’s Slave Refugee Camps (University of North Carolina Press, 2018).
2018: Andrew E. Masich, Civil War in the Southwest Borderlands, 1861-1867 (Oklahoma University Press, 2017).
2017: Daniel W. Crofts, Lincoln and the Politics of Slavery: The Other Thirteenth Amendment and the Struggle to Save the Union (University of North Carolina Press, 2016).
2016: J. Matthew Gallman, Defining Duty in the Civil War: Personal Choice, Popular Culture, and the Union Home Front (University of North Carolina Press, 2015)