Center for Presidential History Book Prize

The CPH Book Prize is awarded annually for a distinguished first book published in English, in any aspect in the field of United States presidential history, broadly defined.

The winner of the 2026 CPH Book prize is Oscar Winberg for his book Archie Bunker for President: How One Television Show Remade American Politics. You can read more about the 2026 winner here.

The prize winner will receive a $2,500 prize and an invitation to deliver the annual CPH Book Prize Lecture at Southern Methodist University in the following academic year. The CPH will pay all author’s travel expenses and deliver the prize at the lecture.

Submissions for the 2027 prize will open in the Fall of 2027. Submissions must be postmarked by November 15, 2026 to be eligible for the 2027 CPH Book Prize.

For complete submission guidelines, click here.

Past winners of the CPH Book Prize include:

• 2025 - Susan Gaunt Stearns, Empire of Commerce: The Closing of the Mississippi and the Opening of Atlantic Trade (Virginia UP)
• 2024 - Sheyda Jahanbani, The Poverty of the World: Rediscovering the Poor at Home and Abroad, 1941-1968 (Oxford UP)
• 2023 - Fritz Bartel, The Triumph of Broken Promises: The End of the Cold War and the Rise of Neoliberalism (Harvard UP)

For questions, please contact the prize administrator at rspitz@smu.edu.