Book Award

ANNOUNCING THE TOM WATSON BROWN BOOK AWARD

Thanks to the initiative and generosity of Tad Brown of the Watson-Brown Foundation of Thomson, Georgia, the SCWH is proud to announce the Tom Watson Brown Book Award. Beginning in 2010 (for a book published in 2009), the $50,000 prize will be awarded annually to the author of the outstanding book on the causes, conduct, and effects, broadly defined, of the Civil War. All genres of scholarship within the field will be eligible, including, but not exclusive to, monographs, synthetic works presenting original interpretations, and biographies. Works of fiction, poetry, and textbooks will not be considered. Jurors will consider nominated works' scholarly and literary merit as well as the extent to which they make original contributions to our understanding of the period.

The following information about the Watson-Brown Foundation is adapted from its website at http://watson-brown.org/index.html. Walter J. Brown, a Georgia journalist and broadcaster, established the Watson-Brown Foundation to honor of his father, J. J. Brown, and his wife’s grandfather, Thomas E. Watson, primarily to provide college scholarships for underprivileged high school students. Today, the Foundation makes annual awards of more than $1 million in merit and need-based college scholarships to students from the Central Savannah River Area of Georgia and South Carolina. The Foundation also awards a year-long residential fellowship at the University of South Carolina for a graduate student in southern studies, as well as a number of short-term grants to scholars conducting research in local repositories.

In addition, the Foundation operates historic house museums in Thomson, Georgia—the Thomas E. Watson Birthplace, the Thomas E. Watson House, and Hickory Hill—as well as the T. R. R. Cobb House in Athens. The Foundation provides additional support for historic preservation in part through its Junior Board of Trustees, high school students who grant annual awards totaling $25,000 to worthy projects and organizations in the region. Finally, the Foundation operates the Monroe Kimbrel Gardens, a four-acre site offering environmental educational opportunities to area students.

George Rable, Charles G. Summersell Professor of Southern History at the University of Alabama and the immediate past-president of the SCWH, will chair the first prize jury. The other members are Elizabeth Leonard, John J. and Cornelia V. Gibson Professor of History at Colby College, and Peter Carmichael, Eberly Family Professor of Civil War Studies at West Virginia University. Publishers are asked to send nominated books (only those published in 2009 will be considered) directly to the jurors and to the Foundation no later than January 31, 2010. The winner will be announced by August 1, 2010. The award will be presented at the SCWH banquet at the Southern Historical Association meeting, where the winner will deliver a formal address that will be published in a subsequent issue of Civil War History.

Nominated books should be sent to:

George Rable, 2927 Hawthorne Circle, Tuscaloosa, AL 35406

Elizabeth Leonard, 3 Cedar Street, Waterville, ME 04901

Peter Carmichael, 308 Euclid Avenue, Morgantown, WV 26501

Tad Brown, President, Watson-Brown Foundation, Inc., 310 Tom Watson Way Thomson, GA 30824