Winners have been selected for the 2025 Bancroft Prize, awarded by Columbia University to two works of either American history, including biography, or diplomacy. Each winner receives $10,000. The winners:
Native Nations: A Millennium in North America by Kathleen DuVal (Random House)
A Machine to Move Ocean and Earth: The Making of the Port of Los Angeles and America by James Tejani (W.W. Norton)
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Maurice and Maralyn: An Extraordinary True Story of Shipwreck, Survival and Love by Sophie Elmhirst has won the £30,000 (about $38,630) 2024 Nero Gold Prize of the Year, given to a book by an author living in the U.K. or Ireland and sponsored by Caffè Nero, the Booksellers Association, and Brunel University of London.
Chair of judges Bill Bryson said: "Maurice and Maralyn is an enthralling, engrossing story of survival and the resilience of the human spirit. Impressively novelistic in its narrative approach, it is a gripping retelling of a true but forgotten story. It is a story of a marriage as much as of an adventure at sea, one that subtly explores the dynamics of a relationship under the greatest imaginable stress. Shining through is the heroine’s courage and fortitude; as Maurice flounders, it is Maralyn's strength that allows them to survive at sea for 118 days--the book is a tribute to Maralyn's grit. Sophie Elmhirst's writing is understated but powerful, immersing the reader intimately in the unfolding drama and the horror of struggling to survive against the odds with very few resources."
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The longlist has been selected for the $3,000 Plutarch Award, sponsored by the Biographers International Organization and judged solely by biographers. The winner will be announced during the 2025 BIO Conference, June 5-6 in Washington, D.C. To see the 10-title longlist, click here.