Source: https://langumtrust.org/about-prizes/past-winners/
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 06:56:10+00:00

Document:
The Winner of the 2016 David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Historical Fiction Is Michele Moore for Her The Cigar Factory (Univ. of South Carolina Press).
This marvelous debut traces the lives of two working class families in Charleston during the years 1917-1946. The families are similar in many ways: devout and practicing Roman Catholics, headed by matriarchs who work in the local cigar factory, both struggling mightily for survival in severely limited circumstances. Yet they are dissimilar in ways crucial for Charleston in these years: one family is black and the other white, they attend separate churches, the matriarchs work in the cigar factory in segregated tasks and floors, use different restrooms, and receive different wages. Union organization and a strike begin a growing awareness by these two women of each other’s existence and the similarities of their and their families’ lives.
The author describes the difficult lives of these two families, both joys and sorrows, with great sensitivity and beauty. Dialect in novels is tricky, but Moore employs the Gullah dialect selectively and in brief snippets, and in so doing does not detract from the ease of reading the novel but rather adds to its verisimilitude. – DJL, Sr.
The Winner of the 2016 David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Legal History/Biography Is Risa Goluboff for Vagrant Nation: Police Power, Constitutional Change, and the Making of the 1960s (Oxford University Press).
The extremely vague vagrancy laws allowed police to arrest somebody for such things as aimless wandering, seeming out of place in a setting, or being without money or employment to provide their support. Police loved these laws since it gave them almost unlimited discretion to lock persons up for such short sentences, 15-30 days usually, that they were almost never appealed. This, the police thought, prevented crimes that these unseemly persons might otherwise have committed. In fact, this wide discretion fostered grave abuse of law enforcement’s powers.
Before 1850 the vagrancy laws had been used sporadically, usually against undesirables, “tramps,” and those who refused to work during periods of labor shortage. During the 1950s and 1960s, the primary period reviewed by this book, the use of vagrancy laws was expanded and used to arrest homosexuals, civil rights activists, interracial couples, beatniks, hippies, and opponents to the Vietnam War.
Judicial pondering about the constitutionality of these laws in the 1960s ultimately led to the Papachristou v. Jacksonville decision in 1972. In that case the United States Supreme Court held that vagrancy laws as traditionally understood were unconstitutional for their vagueness and lack of any specific conduct declared wrongful. This excellent book is well-written and clearly accessible to the general educated reader. In addition the author has provided an abundance of historical and cultural context for the 1960s, so the reader is able to understand the operation of the vagrancy laws and their destruction as an integral part of the times. – DJL, Sr.
Two books won Finalist status for the 2016 David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Legal history: Ballot Battles: The History of Disputed Elections in the United States, by Edward B. Foley (Oxford University Press) and The Great Yazoo Lands Sale: The Case of Fletcher v. Peck, by Charles F. Hobson (University Press of Kansas).
In Ballot Battles, Foley analyzes the details of American elections, state and federal, in which the vote was contested, beginning with the 1781 dispute over the votes cast in an election for a seat on the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania and ending with a 2008 disputed senatorial contest in Minnesota. Appropriately, he spends more time on the major contests, Hayes v. Tilden in 1876 and Bush v. Gore in 2000, but not to the neglect of lesser disputes.
The book focuses on irregularities with vote casting or counting, and therefore only briefly discusses the few election disputes that arose out of the structure of the electoral process, as in the elections of 1800 (tied electoral college vote caused by original structure of Electoral College before 12th amendment) and 1824 (no candidate received a majority of the electors, and election went to the House of Representatives). However, there are an abundance of very close elections that generated disputes over the validity of votes cast or their counting.
Foley attributes the disputes surrounding extremely close elections to a flaw in the original design of our constitutional order: the failure of the founders to provide guidance over the disposition of these disputes. He includes a brief discussion of proposed reforms. – DJL, Sr.
Crossing Purgatory, by Gary Schanbacher (Pegasus). The title carries a double meaning, referring to the crossing of a river in western Kansas where the protagonist settled and made his home, and also the crossing of his own, personal purgatory. A spiritual dimension enlightens this book, not pushed upon the reader and so subtle that a uninterested reader could ignore it but then miss much of the book’s value. When we first meet Thompson Grey he is matching westward from his family farm in Indiana, filled with guilt and remorse. He joins a wagon train traveling westward on the Santa Fe Trail, then settles in a ranch operated by the captain of the wagon train in western Kansas. Throughout the trip and in his stay at the ranch Grey acts humanely, responsibly, and is esteemed by all. Yet his guilt remains with him as gradually the reader understands its basis. His root sins, he understands, are cupidity and the coveting of land, and these he believes had caused the death of his wife and children back in Indiana. In the west he is eventually tempted again, but he finds the means to resist, and while his method might seem extreme to many, it is true to the man and his history.
Irrespective of the protagonist’s inner struggles, the story itself is well-told and exciting. Once again, we have an excellent novel that paints the west with more depth than is usual, that portrays the evil and the hardship as well as the rewards. – DJL Sr.
Seven Locks, by Christine Wade (Atria). Set in the rural Hudson River Valley at the time of the American Revolution, the narrator has far more than her share of difficulties. Her husband, lazy and often absent, finally disappears. Her daughter and son are adolescents and difficult to deal with. Then come the pillages and desolation caused by both sides of the Revolution. She flees and leaves the country. Years later her husband, with a fantastic excuse for his disappearance, returns to the settlement, where the daughter and her husband now live. There is much here about the interior life of the characters, but what makes this book most singular is that it is set among farmers of Dutch descendent. It provides insight into the Dutch colonists and their successors, a group here well-described and about whom little has been written. – DJL Sr.
Swimming in the Moon, by Pamela Schoenewaldt. (Morrow). Lucia and her mother Teresa emigrate from Italy and arrive in Cleveland in 1904. They have the usual immigrant struggles, working long hours for poor pay. Additionally, the mother’s mental health becomes steadily worse, and Lucia faces a conflict between her own ambitions and her duty to her mother. The news of New York’s Triangle Factory fire galvanizes Lucia into participation in the local labor movement. The author has richly drawn her characters and clearly portrayed the emotional tolls cast on the new immigrants. What really sets this novel apart, however, is its depth of social history, the detailed accounts of immigrant life. – DJL Sr.
The Selection Committee has been unable to identify any submission for 2009 that satisfactorily meets the criteria for this prize.
The winner of the 2008 of the David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Historical Fiction is Kathleen Kent for The Heretic’s Daughter: A Novel, published by Little, Brown.
The winner of the 2008 David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Legal History is Ernest Freeberg for Democracy’s Prisoner: Eugene V. Debs, the Great War, and the Right to Dissent, published by the Harvard University Press.
The David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Historical Fiction for 2007 is awarded to Kurt Andersen for his Heyday, a novel (New York: Random House, 2007). Andersen’s Heyday well-fits the purposes of the prize. Set in 1848, the novel begins in New York City and explores the relationship of a traveling Englishman and an American actress and clandestine prostitute, their friends and relations. As misunderstandings develop between the principal protagonists, the woman flees westward, the man pursues her, and in a sub-plot a would-be assassin chases the man. They all end up in California at the beginning of the Gold Rush.
In short, Heyday, a novel is both excellent fiction and lavishly excellent history. – DJL, Sr.
The David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Legal History or Biography for 2007 is awarded to Bruce J. Dierenfield for his book The Battle over School Prayer: How Engel v. Vitale Changed America (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007). A major issue roiling the American public since the 1960s has been the appropriateness and constitutionality of organized prayers in the American public schools. In Engel v. Vitale  the United States Supreme Court struck down a bland prayer without explicit Christian reference that New York State law permitted and a local school district required students recite as a part of the daily opening exercises. In Engel, its first entry into the school prayer issue, the Court held that even with opt-out provisions that permitted individual students to remain silent or leave the room, the prayer violated the interpretation of the First Amendment that had created a “wall of separation” between church and state. The decision caused great consternation. Adherents of public prayers bemoaned their withdrawal in schools as fostering juvenile delinquency, even communism, and destroying the traditional understanding and privileged place of the Christian religion in the nation. Some with such views denounced the ACLU, atheists, Jews, and others they thought were fomenting trouble by bringing lawsuits based on the First Amendment to challenge prayer in schools.
The David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Historical Fiction is awarded to Sheldon Russell for his Dreams to Dust: A Tale of the Oklahoma Land Rush (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006). In this exciting book, Sheldon Russell vividly portrays the Oklahoma land rush of 1889, with special attention to the brief and intense boom-to-bust town of Guthrie. To some extent a roman a clef, many of the novel’s characters are patterned after actual persons and events in early Oklahoma. The treatment of these characters in Russell’s hands is what makes the book rise above the average fast-paced novel. The inner character of the protagonist and many of the primary figures are touched by the spirit of greed and acquisition accompanying the land rush and they engage in conduct with questionable ethical standards. The book is a good correction to the generality of work about great booms, in that it shows their less attractive consequences as well as their glitter. – DJL, Sr.
The David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Legal History or Biography goes to Saul Cornell for his A Well-Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). Cornell argues that the Founding Fathers’ intention for the Second Amendment was to permit Americans to fulfill their civic obligation to assemble for the militia, in contrast with standard modern interpretations, that the Second Amendment gives rights to individuals to bear arms or, alternatively, that it gives only collective rights to the states. While reasonable minds might differ as to this constitutional reading, the primary value of this book is not its view of the Constitution, but rather its history of how Americans over time, from the early republic to the present, have done this reading. Somewhat of an intellectual history as well as a legal history, Cornell shows us how interpretations of the Second Amendment and views of the role of the militia have varied over time and among different sets of Americans. There has been much serious scholarly study of the interpretation of the Second Amendment, with less concerned with its history over the lifetime of the country. However, almost none of either category is directed toward the educated general public. Saul Cornell’s book well fills a need in an area of great public interest. – DJL, Sr.
Honorary mention is given to Carolyn N. Long for her Mapp v. Ohio: Guarding against Unreasonable Searches and Seizures (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006).
For American historical fiction: Madison House: A Novel by Peter Donahue (Hawthorne Books, 2005).
can accompany conventional progress. – DJL, Sr.
For American legal history and legal biography: To the Flag: The Unlikely History of the Pledge of Allegiance by Richard J. Ellis (University Press of Kansas, 2005).
Griswold v. Connecticut: Birth Control and the Constitutional Right of Privacy, by John W. Johnson (Kansas University Press, 2005).
Linda Busby Parker for her Seven Laurels: A Novel (Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2004).
Linda Parker’s book well meets the prize requirements of “both excellent fiction and excellent history.” Set in a small town in South Alabama, Seven Laurels traces the struggles from the 1950s through the early 1990s of an artisan, a black man named Brewster McAtee, to advance in life and enter the American mainstream. There are any number of excellent books on the coming of integration in the southern cities, but Seven Laurels provides relatively uncommon insights into the fading of segregation in the rural South. The descriptions are vivid and the characters sharply drawn. Not far into the book the reader begins to really care about McAtee and his family, and is drawn compulsively into their story. The McAtees’ progress is hardly linear; there are steep downs as well as ups. Seven Laurels is at times heart warming, at other times heart wrenching, but is always filled with marvelous writing. – DJL, Sr.
John M. Ferren for his Salt of the Earth, Conscience of the Court: The Story of Justice Wiley Rutledge (University of North Carolina Press, 2004).
Many readers regard judicial biography as a suspect category. Often written in a ponderous academic style, judicial biographies also tend to concentrate excessively on judicial opinions and chamber procedures, largely because judges generally lead quiet personal lives off the bench. However, John Ferren’s biography of Supreme Court Justice Wiley Rutledge is of a different order. This is a truly satisfying biography, not mere arcane discussion, and by the end of the book the reader feels that he truly understands Rutledge, both the man and his work. Ferren gives us a richly textured description and nuanced evaluation of Rutledge’s entire life, his personal life and career as a legal academic, as well as his judicial years.
The richness of the available manuscript materials, especially the Rutledge Papers in the Library of Congress, facilitated this. However, Ferren added extensively to the existing archival wealth by conducting personal interviews with Rutledge’s former students, law clerks, family, and friends. The bibliography lists 115 oral interviews, plus an additional 52 comments by letter. Of course, in reading of Rutledge’s life the reader does become informed of Supreme Court politics, procedures, and opinions. However, the educated general reader will be borne along through these seemingly arcane matters by Ferren’s wonderfully lucid and accessible writing. – DJL, Sr.
Fries’s Rebellion: The Enduring Struggle for the American Revolution by Paul Douglas Newman (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).
Robert J. Begiebing for his Rebecca Wentworth’s Distraction: A Novel (University Press of New England, 2003).
Rebecca Wentworth’s Distraction’s protagonist is a young male artist, supporting himself in colonial Portsmouth, New Hampshire by painting portraits of wealthy families. On one level the book is an account of the love affair between himself and a young woman of the upper class, herself a far more profound artist than her lover. On yet another level, it teaches us about the American art world of the eighteenth century. At a much deeper level, and by indirection, the novel informs the reader of the nature of class in colonial America, and of the limitations of freedom of action experienced by women, even women of the upper class. At the end of the book, a “reading guide” offers some very thoughtful questions for discussion and an interview with the author that sets forth explicitly his historical research and his use of historical material alongside the fictional. The book is engaging and readable. – DJL, Sr.
Robert J. Cottrol, Raymond T. Diamond, and Leland B. Ware for their Brown v. Board of Education: Caste, Culture, and the Constitution (University Press of Kansas, 2003).
It needs no explanation that the critical school desegregation case of Brown v. Board of Education is among the most important decisions of the United States Supreme Court in the twentieth century. However, this book describes far more than just the lawsuit of its title. In addition to a thorough coverage of Brown, this work traces a panoramic background of the discriminatory treatment of blacks from the mid-nineteenth century to the famous lawsuit and beyond. It does this looking through the prism of law and culture, but with a discussion of legal decisions and principles that is clear and could hardly be more lucidly written. Particularly skillful is the authors’ description of the synergetic relationship of general American cultural attitudes towards blacks and their treatment in law. Which is to say that cultural change is an important element in legal change. Particularly courageous is the asking of some hard questions at the end of the book about Brown’s legacy. Although not central to the theme of the book, the authors do raise the serious issues posed by the re-segregation of most urban schools through a combination of economics and white flight, and also the rejection of many inner-city black youths of hard work at school as “acting white” and thereby a rejection of their own racial identity. – DJL, Sr.
No award for historical fiction was made for 2002.
Two books each won the 2002 prize.
Stuart Banner for his The Death Penalty: An American History (Harvard University Press, 2002).
Stuart Banner has succeed in writing a book I would have thought impossible: a scrupulously dispassionate history of executions in America, from the early colonial period right through the June 2002 execution of Timothy McVeigh. Far more than a mere chronicle of politics and law, Banner details the changing cultural, religious, and even technological contexts of the death penalty. Neutrality of presentation does not preclude critique or analysis, and Banner is quick to criticize specious arguments on both sides of the death penalty debate. Written in an engaging manner, it is a fair prediction that this masterful and thorough study will challenge the views of all readers, no matter what their prior positions. – DJL, Sr.
Lawrence M. Friedman for his American Law in the 20th Century (Yale University Press, 2002).
Lawrence M. Friedman in many books has proved himself to be the master of direct exposition combined with vivid verbs and nicely turned phrases. In several of his works he has also demonstrated remarkable skills in synthesizing massive amounts of materials into single volume treatments of extremely broad topics. He has combined his literary skills and ability at synthesis in this masterful study. Friedman approaches law as an integral part of American society, not as a kingdom unto itself, and finds that changes in the economic and social history of America are most responsible for changes in the law. His major themes are the rise of the welfare-regulatory state, the shift of power and authority to the national government, and the explosion in the size and scale of the legal system. He explores those themes through the examination of topics such as the Roosevelt revolution, race relations and civil rights, and the liability explosion. This book offers the educated general reader delightfully readable access to the broad history of American law in the twentieth century, or such smaller slices as may be desired. -DJL, Sr.
No award for historical fiction was made for 2001.
Elizabeth Urban Alexander for her Notorious Woman: The Celebrated Case of Myra Clark Gaines (Louisiana State University Press, 2001).
Elizabeth Urban Alexander has succeeded in imposing order on a truly massive amount of materials that document more than fifty years of litigation over Myra Gaines’s New Orleans inheritance. The difficulty of creating a short, coherent account out of such a mass of court records, correspondence, and newspaper accounts is enormous; her research and scholarship is impressive.
Not only has Professor Alexander made sense out of this Louisiana version of Bleak House, she has also created a well-written, direct, and fascinating narrative. What really sets the book apart are the numerous succinct and deftly-crafted historical summaries. Through these, the reader learns about a variety of topics, such as: women’s changing roles in the nineteenth century in the legal system, on the public platform, and in sentimental fiction; and the rich political, social, and economic history of New Orleans. Never didactic in tone, the author skillfully seduces the reader into these vignettes of descriptive and analytical history through excellent writing and their real relationship with the strong narrative story of the litigation. – DJL, Sr.

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