Spring 2008
Jean Edward Smith has won the 2008 Francis Parkman Prize of the American Society of Historians for his book FDR (Random House, 2007). The prize, whose purpose is "to stimulate the writing of history as literature," is awarded annually by the Society of American Historians for the best nonfiction book on an American theme published the previous year. The New Yorker called the book a "remarkable, sympathetic biography" that "doesn’t flinch at Roosevelt’s mistakes." The Washington Post reviewer hailed it as "a model presidential biography," praising it for its "careful, intelligent synopsis of the existing Roosevelt scholarship (the sheer bulk of which is huge)" and "meticulous re-interpretation of the man and his record." Smith, who is John Marshall Professor of Political Science at Marshall University in West Virginia, will teach the Session Two "American Statesmen" course this summer with Peter Schramm, focusing on FDR and Lincoln.