1776

Washington College has announced that Annette Gordon-Reed has won the the George Washington Book Prize Winner for her book The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family.

In a previous book, the author looked at the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. In this book, Gordon-Reed examined several generations of the Hemings family - from the early 1700s to after Thomas Jefferson’s death. Luckily, Thomas Jefferson kept extensive records and mentioned the Hemingses often in his letters.

The $50,000 George Washington Book Prize was created in 2005.

Previous winners:

• Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow
• A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America by Stacy Schiff
• Sons of Providence: The Brown Brothers, the Slave Trade, and the American Revolution by Charles Rappleye
• The Slave Ship: A Human History by Marcus Rediker

From the press release:
“The fifth annual $50,000 George Washington Book Prize, honoring the most important new book about America’s founding era, was awarded at Mount Vernon on May 28 to Annette Gordon-Reed for The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (Norton, 2008). Gordon-Reed – author of the highly acclaimed Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy, which offered convincing evidence for the existence of an intimate relationship between the Founder and his slave – was honored for her most recent book, an epic history of the Hemings family that has also won a National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for History.”

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