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
