The Tomlinson Book Prize

Daniel Larsen, Betsy Rohaly Smoot, and Justin G. Prince awarded the 2022 Tomlinson prize for their World War One books

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The World War One Historical Association (WW1HA) annual Norman B. Tomlinson, Jr., prize for 2022 for the best work of history in English on World War One (1914–1918) has been awarded to three exceptional historians:

• Daniel Larsen, author of Plotting for Peace: American Peacemakers, British Codebreakers, and Britain
  at War, 1914–1917 (Cambridge University Press)
• Betsy Rohaly Smoot’s biography of Parker Hitt: TheFather of American Cryptology (University Press of Kentucky)
• Million Dollar Barrage: American Field Artillery in the Great War by Justin G. Prince (University of Oklahoma Press)

This is the seventh time that multiple books won the Tomlinson prize. Four 2021 titles shared the award presented in 2022, three 2018 titles shared the award presented in 2019, three books published in 2016 shared the 2017 award, and three 2010 titles also shared the award presented in 2011. Two books published in 2019 received the award in 2020, and two 2017 books received the award in 2018. The Tomlinson prize started in 1999. WW1HA recognizes that quality research is still being done and we are proud that the Tomlinson is awarded to more than one book when it is deserved.

The Tomlinson prize consists of a cash award and original bronze plaque sculpted by Andrew L. Chernak, a U.S. Army Vietnam War veteran whose sculptures are installed at Arlington Cemetery and state and private parks: andrewchernaksculptures.com

This award was made possible through a grant from Norman B. Tomlinson, Jr., Director–emeritus of The Western Front Association – United States Branch. (WFA–US became the World War One Historical Association in 2011.)

Historians Michael Neiberg, Graydon Tunstall, and Heather Streets–Salter, plus former Editor of World War One Illustrated magazine Dana Lombardy form the prize jury for the Norman B. Tomlinson Prize. Normally the prize is awarded in the year following the calendar year of publication, but there are occasional exceptions to that policy. For information on how to submit books for the prize, email dana.lombardy@gmail.com or neiberg102@gmail.com.

Previous Winners
2021	For the fifth time in its history, three books shared the Tomlinson prize: For King and Country: The British Monarchy and the First World War By Heather Jones Cambridge University Press Global War, Global Catastrophe: Neutrals, Belligerents and the Transformation of the First World War By Maartje Abbenhuis and Ismee Tames Bloomsbury Collections The Austro-Hungarian Army and the First World War By Graydon A. Tunstall Cambridge University Press  Honorable Mention Contact Zones of the First World War: Cultural Encounters across the British Empire By Anna Maguire Cambridge University Press
2020	For the fourth time in its history, three books share the Tomlinson prize: Britain and Italy in the Era of the Great War: Defending and Forging Empires By Stefano Marcuzzi Cambridge University Press Coalition Strategy and the End of the First World War: The Supreme War Council and War Planning, 1917-1918 By Meighen McCrae Cambridge University Press The German Failure in Belgium, August 1914: How Faulty Reconnaissance Exposed the Weakness of the Schlieffen Plan By Dennis Showalter, Joseph P. Robinson and Janet A. Robinson McFarland & Company  Honorable Mention Before Bletchley Park: The Codebreakers of the First World War By Paul Gannon The History Press
2019	When the War Came Home: The Ottomans’ Great War and the Devastation of an Empire By Yiğit Akin Stanford University PressThe Imperial Russian Army in Peace, War, and Revolution, 1856-1917 By Roger R. Reese University Press of Kansas  Honorable Mention World War I: A Country-by-Country Guide By Spencer C. Tucker ABC-CLIO
2018	For the third time in its history, three books share the Tomlinson prize: Haig’s Enemy: Crown Prince Rupprecht and Germany’s War on the Western Front By Jonathan Boff Oxford University Press, 2018 The Generals’ War: Operational Level Command on the Western Front in 1918 By David T. Zabecki Indiana University Press, 2018 Pandora’s Box: A History of the First World War By Jörn Leonhard The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018 Honorable Mention World War One in Southeast Asia: Colonialism and Anticolonialism in an Era of Global Conflict By Heather Streets-Salter
2017	Co-Winners: The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End By Robert Gerwarth Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2017 Pershing’s Crusaders: The American Soldier in World War I By Richard Faulkner University Press of Kansas, 2017
2016	For the second time in its history, three books share the Tomlinson prize: Instrument of War: The German Army 1914-1918 By Dennis Showalter Osprey Publishing, 2016 The Path to War: How the First World War Created Modern America By Michael S. Neiberg Oxford University Press, 2016 Written in Blood: The Battle for Fortress Przemysl in WWI By Graydon “Jack” Tunstall Indiana University Press, 2016
2015	Serbia and the Balkan Front, 1914: The Outbreak of the Great War By James Lyon Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015
2014	Verdun: The Longest Battle of the Great War By Paul Jankowski Oxford University Press, 2013
2013	Planning Armageddon: British Economic Warfare and the First World War By Nicholas A. Lambert Harvard University Press, 2012
2012	The Romanian Battlefront in World War I By Glenn E. Torrey The University Press of Kansas, 2011
2011	The Russian Origins of the First World War By Sean McMeekin Harvard University Press, 2011
2010	The Final Battle: Soldiers of the Western Front in the German Revolution of 1918 By D. Scott Stephenson Cambridge University Press, 2009Blood on the Snow: The Carpathian Winter War of 1915 By Graydon “Jack” Tunstall University Press of Kansas, 2010Breakthrough: The Gorlice-Tarnow Campaign, 1915 By Richard L. DiNardo Praeger, 2010
2009	Bloody Victory: The Sacrifice on the Somme and the Making of the Twentieth Century By William James Philpott Little Brown, 2009
2008	The Second Battle of the Marne By Michael Neiberg University of Indiana Press, 2008
2007	To Conquer Hell: The Meuse-Argonne, 1918 By Edward Lengel Henry Holt & Company, 2008
2006	Pyrrhic Victory: French Strategy and Operations in the Great War By Brigadier General Robert A. Doughty, USA (Ret.) Harvard University Press, 2005
2005	Fighting Different Wars: Experience, Memory and the First World War in Britain By Janet S. K. Watson Cambridge University Press, 2004
2004	A Fraternity of Arms: America and France in the Great War By Robert B. Bruce University Press of Kansas, 2003
2003	France and The Great War, 1914-1918 By Leonard V. Smith, Stephane Audoin-Rouzeau & Annette Becker Cambridge University Press, 2002
2002	German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial By John Horne & Alan Kramer, Yale University Press
2001	The First World War Volume I: To Arms By Hew Strachan, Oxford University Press, 2001
2000	Sir John Fisher’s Naval Revolution By Nicholas A. Lambert University of South Carolina Press, 1999
1999	The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary, 1914-1918 By Holger H. Herwig Edward Arnold Publishing, 1997 A second edition was published by Bloomsbury in 2014 with new material on the domestic front and internal political and ethnic fissures.