2022 Prize Winner

The Philip S. Klein Book Prize is awarded for the best book on a topic that illuminates the history of Pennsylvania every even-numbered year. First awarded in 1996 (for the years 1994-1995), a selection committee evaluates the overall quality of scholarship, the significance of contribution to historical knowledge and methodology, and its style, presentation, and readability. The prize was established in honor of Philip S. Klein, president of the Association from 1954 to 1957. Notice of the award is distributed widely and it carries a cash prize.

October 2022 (For 2020-2021)

Patrick Vitale, Nuclear Suburbs: Cold War Technoscience and the Pittsburgh Renaissance (University of Minnesota Press, 2021).

October 2020 (For 2018-2019)

David W. Young, The Battles of Germantown: Effective Public History in America (Temple University Press, 2019).

October 2018 (for 2016-2017)

Sally McMurry, Pennsylvania Farming: A History in Landscapes (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017)

October 2016 (for 2014-2015)

Jean R. Soderlund, Lenape Country: Delaware Valley Society Before William Penn  (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014)

November 2014 (for 2012-2013)

Mark L. Thompson, The Contest for the Delaware Valley: Allegiance, Identity, and Empire in the Seventeenth Century (LSU Press, 2013)

November 2012 (for 2010-2011)

Judith Ridner, A Town In-Between: Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and the Early Mid-Atlantic Interior (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010)

October 2010 (for 2008-2009)

Sarah Fatherly, Gentlewomen and Learned Ladies: Women and Elite Formation in Eighteenth Century Philadelphia (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 2008)

October 2008 (for 2006-2007

Terry Bouton, Taming Democracy: “The People,” The Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2007)

October 2006 (for 2004-2005)

Thomas Dublin and Walter Licht, The Face of Decline: The Pennsylvania Anthracite Region in the Twentieth Century (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005)

October 2004 (for 2002-2003)

Bruce Dorsey, Reforming Men and Women: Gender in the Antebellum City (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002)

October 2002 (for 2000-2001)

William A. Blair and William A. Pencak, Making and Remaking Pennsylvania’s Civil War (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001)

October 2000 (for 1998-1999)

Kenneth J. Heineman, A Catholic New Deal: Religion and Reform in Depression Pittsburgh (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999)

October 1998 (for 1996-97)

Carol Reardon, Pickett’s Charge in History and Memory (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997)

October 1996 (for 1994-95)

Ewa Morawska, Insecure Prosperity: Small-Town Jews in Industrial America, 1890-1940 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996)