Hagley Prize

The Hagley Museum and Library and the Business History Conference jointly offer an annual prize for the best book in business history, broadly defined. The prize committee encourages the submission of books from all methodological perspectives. It is particularly interested in innovative studies that have the potential to expand the boundaries of the discipline. Scholars, publishers, and other interested parties may submit nominations. Eligible books can have either an American or an international focus. They must be written in English and be published during the two years prior to the award.

Four copies of a book must accompany a nomination and be submitted to the prize coordinator: Carol Ressler Lockman, Hagley Museum and Library, P.O. Box 3630, 298 Buck Road East, Wilmington, DE 19807-0630. The deadline for nominations is November 30.

For more information on past prize winners, please go to https://thebhc.org/hagley.

Hagley Prize Recipients:

2024:  Margot Canaday

Queer Career: Sexuality and Work in Modern America, Princeton University Press

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2023:  Co-Winners:  Hannah Farber and Alejandro J. Gómez del Moral

Underwriters of the United States:  How Insurance Shaped the American Founding, University of North Carolina Press

Buying into Change:  Mass Consumption, Dictatorship, and Democratization in Franco’s Spain, University of Nebraska Press

2022: Co-Winners: Caley Horan and Timothy Yang

Insurance Era: Risk, Governance, and the Privatization of Security in Postwar America, The University of Chicago Press

A Medicated Empire: The Pharmaceutical Industry and Modern Japan, Cornell University Press 

2021: Co-Winners: Marcia Chatelain and Ben Marsh

Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America, WW Norton

Unraveled Dreams: Silk and the Atlantic World, 1500–1840 Cambridge

2020: Ai Hisano

Visualizing Taste: How Business Changed the Look of What You Eat, Harvard University Press

2019: Per H. Hansen

Danish Modern Furniture, 1930-2016: The Rise, Decline and Re-emergence of a Cultural Market Category, University Press of Southern Denmark

2018: Kenda Mutongi

MATATU: A History of Popular Transportation in Nairobi, University of Chicago Press

2017: Mark R. Wilson

Destructive Creation: American Business and the Winning of World War II, University of Pennsylvania Press

2016: Co-Winners: Vicki Howard and Jonathan Coopersmith

From Main Street to Mall: The Rise and Fall of the American Department Store, University of Pennsylvania Press

Faxed: The Rise and Fall of the Fax Machine, Johns Hopkins University Press

2015: Walter A. Friedman

Fortune Tellers: The Story of America’s First Economic Forecasters, Princeton University Press

2014: Co-Winners: Bernhard Rieger and Dimitry Anastakis

The People’s Car: A Global History of the Volkswagen Beetle, Harvard University Press

Autonomous State: The Struggle for a Canadian Car Industry from OPEC to Free Trade, University of Toronto Press

2013: Michael B. Miller

Europe and the Maritime world: A Twentieth-Century History, Cambridge University Press

2012: Sharon Ann Murphy

Investing in Life: Insurance in Antebellum America, The Johns Hopkins University Press

2011 : Susan Ingalls Lewis

Unexceptional Women: Female Proprietors in Mid-Nineteenth Century Albany, New York, 1830-1885, Ohio State University Press

2010 : David Suisman

Selling Sounds: The Commercial Revolution in American Music, Harvard University Press

2009 : Ann Smart Martin

Buying into the World of Goods, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008

2008 : Thomas K. McCraw

Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction, Belknap Press, 2007

2007 : Christopher McKenna

The World's Newest Profession: Management Consulting in the Twentieth Century, Cambridge University Press, 2006

2006 : Pamela Walker Laird

Pull: Networking and Success since Benjamin Franklin, Harvard University Press, 2006

2005 : Co-Winners: Mira Wilkins and Thomas A. Kinney

The History of Foreign Investment in the United States, 1914-1945, Harvard University Press, 2004

The Carriage Trade: Making Horse-Drawn Vehicles in America, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004

2004 : Jennifer Klein

For All These Rights: Business, Labor, and the Shaping of America's Public-Private Welfare State, Princeton University Press, 2003

2003 : Clare Haru Crowston

Fabricating Women: The Seamstresses of Old Regime France, 1675-1791, Duke University Press, 2001

2002 Co-Winners : S. Jonathan Wiesen and Gerald D. Feldman

West German Industry and the Challenge of the Nazi Past, 1945-1955, University of North Carolina Press, 2001

Allianz and the German Insurance Business, 1933-1945, Cambridge University Press, 2001

2001 : Regina Lee Blaszczyk

Imagining Consumers: Design and Innovation from Wedgwood to Corning, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000

2000 : Kathryn Burns

Colonial Habits: Convents and the Spiritual Economy of Cuzco, Peru, Duke University Press, 1999

1999 : Roland Marchand

Creating the Corporate Soul: The Rise of Public Relations and Corporate Imagery in American Big Business, University of California Press, 1998