Award-Winning Books
In addition to the prizes included on this page, many other book prizes are awarded through subject-specific groups and societies, like the following:
HSS (History of Science Society) - Waston Davis Prize
Each book listed below has been awarded the Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize from the History of Science Society, honoring "books in the history of science directed to a wide public (including undergraduate instruction)."
The most recent winners are included here; for a list of all award-winning books from 1986 to the present, see: Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize.
- Einstein's War: How Relativity Triumphed Amid the Vicious Nationalism of World War I byPublication Date: 20192021 Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize
- The Lost White Tribe: Explorers, Scientists, and the Theory that Changed a Continent byPublication Date: 20162019 Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize
- Earth's Deep History byPublication Date: 20142015 Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize and 2015 Dingle Prize
- How the Hippies Saved Physics byPublication Date: 20122013 Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize
- Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming byPublication Date: 20102011 Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize
- The Day We Found the Universe byPublication Date: 20092010 Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize
- Sun in a Bottle: The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking byPublication Date: 20082009 Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize
- Fathoming the Ocean: The Discovery and Exploration of the Deep Sea byPublication Date: 20052008 Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize
- Francis Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic Code byPublication Date: 20062007 Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize
- Pandora's Baby: How the First Test Tube Babies Sparked the Reproductive Revolution byPublication Date: 20042006 Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize
- Goldberger's War: The Life and World of a Public Health Crusader byPublication Date: 20032005 Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize
- The Manhattan Project: Big Science and the Atomic Bomb byPublication Date: 20032004 Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize
- The Measure of All Things: The Seven Year Odyssey and Hidden Error that Transformed the World byPublication Date: 20022003 Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize
- Revolutionizing the Sciences: European Knowledge and Its Ambitions, 1500-1700 byPublication Date: 2001Also available in 2nd edition
2002 Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize - Reel Nature: America's Romance with Wildlife on Film byPublication Date: 19992000 Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize
- The Baltimore Case: A Trial of Politics, Science and Character byPublication Date: 19981999 Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize
SHOT (Society for the History of Technology) - Edelstein Prize
Each book listed below has been awarded the Edelstein Prize by the Society for the History of Technology. This prize is "awarded to the author of an outstanding scholarly book in the history of technology." For more on this book prize, see: The Edelstein Prize
- After the Map: cartography, navigation, and the transformation of territory in the twentieth century byPublication Date: 20162017 Edelstein Prize
- Sensing Changes : Technologies, Environments, and the Everyday, 1953-2003 byPublication Date: 20102011 Edelstein Prize
- The Mantra of Efficiency: From Waterwheel to Social Control byPublication Date: 20082010 Edelstein Prize
- Heroes of Invention: Technology, Liberalism and British Identity, 1750-1914 byPublication Date: 20072008 Edelstein Prize
- Earthquake Nation: The Cultural Politics of Japanese Seismicity, 1868-1930 byPublication Date: 20062007 Edelstein Prize
- The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900-1933 byPublication Date: 20022005 Edelstein Prize
- Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America byPublication Date: 20032004 Edelstein Prize
- War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with Chemicals from World War I to Silent Spring byPublication Date: 20012003 Edelstein Prize
- The Sanitary City: Urban Infrastructure in America from Colonial Times to the Present byPublication Date: 20002002 Edelstein Prize
- The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity after World War II (Online access) byPublication Date: 19982001 Edelstein Prize
- Technology and Gender - Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial China (Online access) byPublication Date: 1997Also available as E-Book
1999 Edelstein Prize
HSS (History of Science Society) - Pfizer Award
Each book listed below has been recognized by the History of Science Society as "an outstanding book dealing with the history of science."
The most recent winners are included here; for a list of all Pfizer Award books from 1959 to the present, see: History of Science Society: Pfizer Award.
- The Spanish Disquiet: The Biblical Natural Philosophy of Benito Arias Montano byPublication Date: 20192021 Pfizer Prize
- Climate in Motion: Science, Empire, and the Problem of Scale byPublication Date: 20182019 Pfizer Prize
- Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age byPublication Date: 20072009 Pfizer Award
- The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution byPublication Date: 20072008 Pfizer Award
- Drawing Theories Apart: The Dispersion of Feynman Diagrams in Postwar Physics byPublication Date: 20052007 Pfizer Award
- Patterns of Behavior: Konrad Lorenz, Niko Tinbergen, and the Founding of Ethology byPublication Date: 20052006 Pfizer Award
- Alchemy Tried in the Fire: Starkey, Boyle, and the Fate of Helmontian Chymistry byPublication Date: 20022005 Pfizer Award
- The Man Who Flattened the Earth: Maupertuis and the Sciences in the Enlightenment byPublication Date: 20022003 Pfizer Award
- Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" byPublication Date: 20002002 Pfizer Award
- The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals as Solar Observatories (Online access) byPublication Date: 19992001 Pfizer Award
- The Science of Energy: A Cultural History of Energy Physics byPublication Date: 19982000 Pfizer Award
- Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750 (Online access) byPublication Date: 1998Also available as and eBook
1999 Pfizer Award
BSHS (British Society for the History of Science) - Hughes Prize (formerly Dingle Prize)
Each book listed below has been awarded the Hughes Prize (or, previously, the Dingle Prize) by the British Society for the History of Science. This prize honors "the best book in the history of science (broadly construed) published in English . . . which is accessible to a wide audience of non-specialists." For more see: Hughes Prize.
- Collecting the World: Hans Sloane and the Origins of the British Museum byPublication Date: 20172019 Hughes Prize
- Earth's Deep History byPublication Date: 20142015 Dingle Prize and 2015 Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize
- Elegant Solutions: Ten Beautiful Experiments in Chemistry byPublication Date: 2005Also available as eBook
2007 Dingle Prize - The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error that Transformed the World byPublication Date: 20022003 Dingle Prize
4S (Society for Social Studies of Science) - Rachel Carson Prize
Each book listed here has been awarded the Rachel Carson Prize by the Society for Social Studies of Science. This prize is for a "book length work of social or political relevance in the area of science and technology studies." For more on his book prize, see: Rachel Carson Prize.
- Energy at the End of the World: An Orkney Islands Saga byISBN: 0262349663Publication Date: 20192021 Rachel Carson Prize
- Radiation Brain Moms and Citizen Scientists: The Gender Politics of Food Contamination byPublication Date: 20162019 Rachel Carson Prize
- Life Support: Biocapital and the New History of Outsourced Labor byPublication Date: 20152018 Rachel Carson Prize
- HIV Exceptionalism: Development Through Disease in Sierra Leone byPublication Date: 20152017 Rachel Carson Prize
- Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition byPublication Date: 20122014 Rachel Carson Prize
- Just One Child: Science and Policy in Deng's China byPublication Date: 20082010 Rachel Carson Prize
- Prescribing by Numbers: Drugs and the Definition of Disease byPublication Date: 20072009 Rachel Carson Prize
- Picturing Personhood - Brain Scans and Biomedical Identity byPublication Date: 20042006 Rachel Carson Prize
- Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and Criminal Identification byPublication Date: 20012003 Rachel Carson Prize
- From Heresy to Dogma: An Institutional History of Corporate Environmentalism byPublication Date: 20012001 Rachel Carson Prize
- The Struggle for Water: Politics, Rationality, and Identity in the American Southwest byPublication Date: 19982000 Rachel Carson Prize
- Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge (Online access) byPublication Date: 19961999 Rachel Carson Prize
- The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA (Online access) byISBN: 9780226851761Publication Date: 1997Also available as an eBook
1998 Rachel Carson Prize
SHOT (Society for the History of Technology) - Hacker Prize
Each book listed below has been awarded the Sally Hacker Prize by the Society for the History of Technology. This prize honors "exceptional scholarship that reaches beyond the academy toward a broad audience." For more on this book prize, see: The Hacker Prize.
- The Charisma Machine: The Life, Death and Legacy of One Laptop per Child byPublication Date: 20192020 Sally Hacker Prize
- Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control byPublication Date: 20102011 Sally Hacker Prize
- River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West byPublication Date: 20032004 Sally Hacker Prize
- War, Technology, and Experience Aboard the USS Monitor byPublication Date: 20002001 Sally Hacker Prize
- Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination (Online access) byPublication Date: 2004 edition2000 Sally Hacker Prize
4S (Society for Social Studies of Science) - Ludwik Fleck Prize
Each book listed below has been awarded the Ludwik Fleck Prize by the Society for Social Studies of Science. This prize is "awarded annually for the best book in the area of science and technology studies." For more on this book prize, see: Ludwik Fleck Prize
- Economists and Societies: Discipline and Profession in the United States, Britain, and France, 1890s to 1990s byPublication Date: 20092011 Ludwik Fleck Prize
- Inclusion: The Politics of Difference in Medical Research byPublication Date: 20072009 Ludwik Fleck Prize
- Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty byISBN: 0822336715Publication Date: 20062006 Ludwik Fleck Prize
- Biomedical Platforms: Realigning the Normal and the Pathological in Late-Twentieth-Century Medicine byPublication Date: 20032005 Ludwik Fleck Prize
- Science and an African Logic byISBN: 0226853918Publication Date: 2001-12-152003 Ludgwig Fleck Prize
- The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change byPublication Date: 19982002 Ludwik Fleck Prize
- Who Wrote the Book of Life? A History of the Genetic Code byPublication Date: 20002002 Ludwik Fleck Prize
- Disciplining Reproduction: Modernity, American Life Sciences, and "The Problems of Sex" byPublication Date: 1998Also available as eBook
2000 Ludwik Fleck Prize - Modest-Witness Second-Millenium Femaleman Meets OncoMouse: Feminism and Technoscience byPublication Date: 19971999 Ludwik Fleck Prize
- Discipline and Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution byPublication Date: 19951998 Ludwik Fleck Prize
- Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life byPublication Date: 19951997 Ludwik Fleck Prize
- A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England byPublication Date: 19941996 Ludwik Fleck Prize