New annual book prize awards $50k to top military history book

NEW YORK CITY—June 12, 2013—The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation announced today the establishment of the Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize in Military History, which carries an award of $50,000. The prize will be awarded annually in recognition of the best book in the field of military history published in English during the previous calendar year. The inaugural award will be made in February 2014 for a book published in 2013. “It is our hope that the establishment of this prize will draw public attention to the field's continuing utility as an important staple of education in international politics, diplomacy, and conflict, and to assist in the restoration of military history to an important place in university curricula,” said Josiah Bunting III, president of the foundation. “If we do not learn from the conflicts of the past, we will be doomed to repeat them. For the sake of all, we cannot allow this area of scholarship and thinking to atrophy in the United States or abroad.”