Bancroft Prize for history awarded to noted Yale historian and YUP book

David Blight’s award-winning book “Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom” was recently recognized with one of the 2019 Bancroft Prizes in American History and Diplomacy, which are awarded to books published in 2018.

Yale University Press is the publisher of the other book that was awarded the prize, Lisa Brook’s “Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War.”

Blight’s “Frederick Douglass, Prophet of Freedom,” was cited for offering “a definitive portrait” of the 19th-century former slave, abolitionist, writer, and orator “in all his fullness and imperfection, his intellectual gifts and emotional needs.”

Brooks’ “Our Beloved Kin,” was praised for how it “imaginatively illuminates submerged indigenous histories,” drawing readers into “a complex world of tensions, alliances, and betrayals” that fueled the conflict between Native Americans in New England and European colonists and their Indian allies.

The Bancroft Prize, which includes an award of $10,000, was established in 1948 by the trustees of Columbia University, with a bequest from the historian Frederic Bancroft.

Both of the honorees will be recognized for their achievements at a dinner to be held on April 29 at Columbia University.