Scandinavian native Pekka Hämäläinen will receive the William P. Clements Prize for the Best Non-Fiction Book on Southwestern America during ceremonies at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 3, in SMU's DeGolyer Library.
Hämäläinen's revelatory book, The Comanche Empire, is about the nation-changing power of the Comanche Indians, which he honed while he was a fellow at the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies in Dedman College at Southern Methodist University.
“The Comanche Empire is a landmark study that will make readers see the history of southwestern America in an entirely new way,” said David Weber, Robert and Nancy Dedman Professor of History and director of the Clements Center. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry has called The Comanche Empire “cutting-edge revisionist western history in every way.”
McMurtry wrote in the New York Review of Books that Hämäläinen’s work spelled out a convincing argument that Comanche power is the missing link in the historical sequence that led to Spain’s failure to colonize the interior of North America and, ultimately, the decay of Mexican power in what is now the American Southwest. Citing Hämäläinen’s description of the political, economic and social organization of the Comanches, McMurtry wrote, “Blink a time or two and the reader might forget that the book at hand is about Comanches, rather than Microsoft.”
Hämäläinen, a native of Finland, is associate professor of history at the University of California at Santa Barbara, a position he accepted in 2004. He was a fellow at the Clements Center during the 2001-2002 academic year after receiving his Ph.D. in general history at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Hämäläinen notes in the acknowledgment section of The Comanche Empire that the book would not exist without the counsel and encouragement of SMU’s Weber and the Clements Center manuscript workshop that brought together prominent scholars to discuss his project.
Awards & Distinctions The Comanche Empire has received include:
- Winner of the 2009 Bancroft Prize, given by Columbia University
- Winner of the 2008 Kate Broocks Bates Award, presented by the Texas State Historical Association
- Co-winner of the 2009 Merle Curti Award, presented by the Organization of American Historians
- Received Honorable Mention for the 2008 PROSE Award in the U.S. History and Biography/Autobiography category, sponsored by the Association of American Publishers
- Gold medal winner of the 2008 Book of the Year Award in the category of History, presented by ForeWord magazine
- Winner of the Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize presented by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Center for Great Plains Studies
- Co-Silver medal winner of the 2009 Independent Publisher Book Award in the category of History
- An alternate selection of History Book Club, Military Book Club, and Book-of-the-Month Club
The $2,500 Clements Book Prize honors fine writing and original research on the American Southwest. The competition is open to any nonfiction book, including biography, on any aspect of Southwestern life, past or present.
The William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies is part of SMU's Dedman College and affiliated with the Department of History. It was created to promote research, publishing, teaching and public programming in a variety of fields related to the American Southwest. For more information about the Center or about the upcoming book prize event, please call (214) 768-3684 or see http://smu.edu/swcenter/prize.htm.
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