The Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History, established in 1980, is a category of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Works are eligible during the year of their first US publication in English, though they may be written originally in languages other than English.
| Year | Author | Title | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1980 | Walter Lippmann and the American Century | Winner | [1] | |
| 1981 | Land of Savagery/Land of Promise: The European Image of the American Frontier in the Nineteenth Century | Winner | [2] | |
| 1982 | The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and Their Revolution, 1895–1980 | Winner | [3] | |
| 1983 | The Wheels of Commerce | Winner | [4] | |
| 1984 | The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History | Winner | [5] | |
| 1985 | Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn | Winner | [6] | |
| 1986 | The First Socialist Society: A History of the Soviet Union from Within | Winner | [7] | |
| 1987 | Winner | [8] | ||
| 1988 | Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 | Winner | [9] | |
| 1989 | An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood | Winner | [10] | |
| 1990 | The Quest for El Cid | Winner | [11] | |
| A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East | Finalist | |||
| Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People | ||||
| Italy and its Monarchy | ||||
| The Search for Modern China | ||||
| 1991 | The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America | Winner | [12] | |
| Behind the Mask of Innocence: Sex, Violence, Prejudice, Crime: Films of Social Conscience in the Silent Era | Finalist | |||
| Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768 | ||||
| Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928-1941 | ||||
| 1992 | Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Italian Jewish Families under Fascism | Winner | [13] | |
| Frontiers: The Epic of South Africa’s Creation and the Tragedy of the Xhosa People | Finalist | |||
| Owen Lattimore and the “Loss” of China | ||||
| The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair’s Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics | ||||
| Triumphs and Tragedy: A History of the Mexican People | ||||
| 1993 | New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery | Winner | [14] | |
| Rising in the West: The True Story of an “Okie” family in Search of the American Dream | Finalist | |||
| and Jon Rothschild | The Immobile Empire | |||
| Tragic Mountains: The Hmong, the Americans, and the Secret Wars for Laos, 1942-1992 | ||||
| 1994 | Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940 | Winner | [15] | |
| Anti-Semitism in America | Finalist | |||
| Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945 | ||||
| Marriage of Likeness: Same-sex Unions in Pre-modern Europe | ||||
| Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times | ||||
| 1995 | Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America | Winner | [16] | |
| Marketing Modernism in Fin-de-Siècle Europe | Finalist | |||
| Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South | ||||
| Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956 | ||||
| 1996 | Black Sea | Winner | [17] | |
| Ashes to Ashes: America’s Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris | Finalist | |||
| Endangered Dreams: The Great Depression in California | ||||
| William Cooper’s Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic | ||||
| 1997 | Winner | [18] | ||
| Echoes of a Native Land: Two Centuries of a Russian Village | Finalist | |||
| Fat History: Bodies and Beauty in the Modern West | ||||
| Nazi Germany and the Jews: Volume 1. The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939 | ||||
| Sun Dancing: Life in a Medieval Irish Monastery and How Celtic Spirituality Influenced the World | ||||
| 1998 | The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity | Winner | [19] | |
| Hope in a Jar: The Making of America’s Beauty Culture | Finalist | [20] | ||
| Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America | ||||
| Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry | ||||
| The Gospel of Germs: Men, Women, and the Microbe in American Life | ||||
| 1999 | Winner | |||
| Empire Express: Building the 1st Transcontinental Railroad | Finalist | [21] | ||
| Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 | ||||
| The First World War | ||||
| The Holocaust in American Life | ||||
| 2000 | The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach | Winner | ||
| In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex | Finalist | [22] | ||
| Kosovo: War and Revenge | ||||
| Resisting Hitler: Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra | ||||
| The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States | ||||
| 2001 | Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus | Winner | ||
| France: The Dark Years, 1940-1944 | Finalist | [23] | ||
| The Stranger from Paradise: A Biography of William Blake | ||||
| Venice: Lion City | ||||
| 2002 | Winner | |||
| At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America | Finalist | [24] | ||
| Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence and Edward Teller | ||||
| In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692 | ||||
| 2003 | An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America | Winner | [25] | |
| Finalist | ||||
| Homosexuality and Civilization | ||||
| When the King Took Flight | ||||
| 2004 | Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism | Winner | [26] | |
| Beasts of the Field: A Narrative History of California Farm Workers, 1769-1913 | Finalist | |||
| High Noon in the Cold War: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Cuban Missile Crisis | ||||
| Masquerade: The Life and Times of Deborah Sampson, Continental Soldier | ||||
| The Coming of the Third Reich: Volume 1 of The Third Reich Series | ||||
| 2005 | Winner | [27] | ||
| and Tim Harper | Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia, 1941-1945 | Finalist | [28] | |
| The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln | ||||
| The Third Reich in Power: Volume 2 of The Third Reich Series | ||||
| 2006 | The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 | Winner | [29] [30] | |
| At Canaan’s Edge: Volume 3 of America in the King Years, 1965-68 | Finalist | [31] | ||
| John Tayman | The Colony: The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai | |||
| The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West | ||||
| 2007 | Winner | [32] | ||
| Nixon and Mao: The Week that Changed the World | Finalist | |||
| The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It | ||||
| The Greatest Battle: Stalin, Hitler, and the Desperate Struggle for Moscow that Changed the Course of World War II | ||||
| Troublesome Young Men: The Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped Save England | ||||
| 2008 | Hitler's Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe | Winner | [33] [34] | |
| Obscene in the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath | Finalist | [35] | ||
| One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War | ||||
| Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North | ||||
| This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War | ||||
| 2009 | Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance 1950–1963 | Winner | [36] | |
| Finalist | [37] | |||
| Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890-1940 | ||||
| Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line | ||||
| 2010 | The Killing of Crazy Horse | Winner | [38] | |
| Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor/Hiroshima/9-11/Iraq | [39] | |||
| Roosevelt’s Purge: How FDR Fought to Change the Democratic Party | ||||
| Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization | ||||
| 2011 | Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America | Winner | [40] | |
| 1861: The Civil War Awakening | Finalist | [41] | ||
| Molotov’s Magic Lantern: Travels in Russian History | ||||
| with Anne McLean (trans.) | The Anatomy of a Moment: Thirty-Five Minutes in History and Imagination | |||
| To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 | ||||
| 2012 | America's Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise That Preserved the Union | Winner | [42] [43] | |
| A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico | Finalist | [44] | ||
| Empire of Shadows: The Epic Story of Yellowstone | ||||
| Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty | ||||
| Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party | ||||
| 2013 | Winner | [45] | ||
| and Allan J. Lichtman | FDR and the Jews | Finalist | [46] | |
| The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism | ||||
| The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend | ||||
| 2014 | The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916–1931 | Winner | [47] [48] | |
| Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War | Finalist | [49] | ||
| The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens’ London | ||||
| Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David | ||||
| 2015 | Killing a King: The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Remaking of Israel | Winner | [50] | |
| Dark Places of the Earth: The Voyage of the Slave Ship Antelope | Finalist | |||
| This Gulf of Fire: The Destruction of Lisbon, or Apocalypse in the Age of Science and Reason | ||||
| 2016 | An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846–1873 | Winner | [51] | |
| Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy | Finalist | [52] | ||
| Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939 | ||||
| Where the Jews Aren’t: The Sad and Absurd Story of Birobidzhan, Russia’s Jewish Autonomous Region | ||||
| White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America | ||||
| 2017 | The Death and Life of the Great Lakes | Winner | [53] | |
| The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America | Finalist | |||
| The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America | ||||
| Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam | ||||
| London’s Triumph: Merchants, Adventurers, and Money in Shakespeare’s City | ||||
| 2018 | Travelers in the Third Reich: The Rise of Fascism: 1919–1945 | Winner | [54] | |
| 2019 | They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South | Winner | [55] [56] | |
| 2020 | Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All | Winner | [57] [58] | |
| South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War | Finalist | [59] | ||
| The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Expelling Immigrants | ||||
| The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States | ||||
| The United States of War: A Global History of America’s Endless Conflicts, From Columbus to the Islamic State | ||||
| 2020 | Winner | [60] | ||
| Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance | Finalist | |||
| The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics | ||||
| African Europeans: An Untold History | ||||
| I've Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land | ||||
| 2022 | By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners | Winner | [61] | |
| Hugh Eakin | Picasso’s War: How Modern Art Came to America | Finalist | ||
| Kerri K. Greenidge | The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family | |||
| Andrew M. Wehrman | The Contagion of Liberty: The Politics of Smallpox in the American Revolution | |||
| Donald Yacovone | Teaching White Supremacy: America’s Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of our National Identity | |||
| 2023 | Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century | Winner | [62] | |
| Ned Blackhawk | The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History | Finalist | ||
| Malcolm Harris | Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World | |||
| Blair L.M. Kelley | Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class | |||
| Nikki M. Taylor | Brooding Over Bloody Revenge: Enslaved Women’s Lethal Resistance |