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U.Va. Historian Alan Taylor Wins 2014 Pulitzer for Book on Slaves and War -- His second Pulitzer!

University of Virginia historian Alan Taylor, one of the nation’s premier experts in Colonial America and the early U.S. republic, has received a Pulitzer Prize for his book, “The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832.”

The Pulitzer committee’s citation calls the book “a meticulous and insightful account of why runaway slaves in the colonial era were drawn to the British side as potential liberators.”

Taylor, who arrived at U.Va. in March and will begin teaching in August as the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Chair in the Corcoran Department of History in the College of Arts & Sciences, said he was “astonished” at the news.

“I realized it when my email went crazy,” Taylor said. “It is nice when you get congratulations from so many friends. It is wonderful to see how happy others are at my good fortune.”

U.Va. President Teresa A. Sullivan congratulated Taylor on the award. “This prize is yet another recognition of Alan Taylor’s remarkable research and scholarship and his unique perspective on early American history,” she said. “We are delighted that he has joined our faculty, and that he will continue his distinguished career at U.Va.”

This is not the first time Taylor has won the prize. He received his first Pulitzer in 1996 for his book, “William Cooper’s Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early Republic.” He also received a Bancroft Prize for that book.

“I didn’t expect my first Pulitzer and I certainly did not expect this,” said Taylor, who received the news in Philadelphia, where he was preparing a talk for a group of historians.

“This is huge,” said Paul Halliday, who chairs U.Va.’s history department. “We have a lot of terrific, prize-winning historians in this department, but to win a second Pulitzer is remarkable.”...

Read entire article at UVA Today