《Frederick Douglass，Prophet of Freedom》与《Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War》。 （资料图/图）
According to the New York Times, the 2019 Bancroft History Prize was recently awarded to David M. David W. Blight's Frederick Douglass, Prophet of Freedom, and Lisa Brooks' Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip's War.
The Bancroft Prize is recognized as the highest award in American historiography and is awarded to works related to American history or diplomacy.
The biographical work Frederick Douglas: The Prophet of Liberty is a nine-hundred-plus-page book that was selected as one of the New York Times' 2018 Top Ten Books of the Year. Written by David M. W. Bright taught at Yale University and is known for his research on African-American history, including Beyond the Battlefield: Race, Memory, and the American Civil War and Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory.
Douglas was the leader of the 19th-century Abolitionist movement in The United States, as well as a writer, speaker, and humanitarian. His mother was a black slave and his father was a white man, who became a slave at an early age, fled as a young man, and actively participated in the abolitionist movement after he was freed. During the Civil War, he helped recruit black soldiers for the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, the first black infantry regiment in the U.S. Army. He believed that recruiting black soldiers for the Northern Army would help win the war while also promoting equal rights.
In addition, Douglas was the first black man to serve as a diplomatic envoy to the U.S. government. Until later in his life, he also served as Registrar of Deeds in Washington, D.C., and as Minister to the Republic of Haiti and the United States Minister to the Republic of Haiti.
Douglas is the author of three autobiographies, and frederick Douglas: A Life Statement of an American Slave, published in 1845, is regarded as one of the best. But the New York Times argues that Bright's biography is superior to this autobiography, presenting Douglas more comprehensively, "telling douglass's public and private life in ways that Douglas can't or won't."
"Our Dearest" focuses on the "King Philip Wars" of the 17th century. The war was named after the Native American chief "King Philip", whose original name was Metacomet. "Our Dearest" recreates a world of cooperation and betrayal, showing how the war between Native Americans and British immigrants intensified. Lisa Brooks' research, based on extensive historical sources and fieldwork in New England, has been praised as "an imaginative interpretation of buried Aboriginal history."
Established in 1948 at the will of the American historian Frederick Bancroft, the Bancroft Prize is awarded annually by Columbia University. Bancroft Prize winners receive $10,000, regardless of country, but the candidate book or translation must be published in English.