In the Wake of War Wins the $50k Tom Watson Brown Book Award!

We are thrilled to announce that Andrew Lang’s In the Wake of War: Military Occupation, Emancipation, and Civil War America has won the 2018 Tom Watson Brown Book Award!

The Society of Civil War Historians presents this $50,000 honor annually to the author of the best book published in the previous year on the causes, conduct, and effects of the Civil War. During the decision process, jurors consider nominated books’ scholarly and literary merit as well as the extent to which they make original contributions to the understanding of the Civil War period.

The Civil War era marked the dawn of American wars of military occupation, inaugurating a tradition that persisted through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and that continues to the present. In the Wake of War traces how volunteer and even professional soldiers found themselves tasked with the unprecedented project of wartime and peacetime military occupation, initiating a national debate about the changing nature of American military practice that continued into Reconstruction.

Tad Brown, president of the Watson-Brown Foundation, will present the award at a special banquet during the annual meeting of the Southern Historical Association, where Lang will also offer an address.

To learn more about the book, read Andrew Lang’s post on our blog and buy In the Wake of War today!