At the Los Angeles Public Library’s central venue, a globe chandelier in the 1993 Tom Bradley wing, designed by Norman Pfeiffer. Image – Getty: Gnagel
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
The 49th Edition of the PROSE Awards
In the deep sea of book and publishing awards, the United States’ academic-publishing PROSE Awards from the Association of American Publishers (AAP) vie each year with the British Book Awards for sheer number of categories and shortlisted titles.
Today (March 3, the PROSE Awards—the acronym is from Professional and Scholarly Excellence and the archive of our coverage is here—are announcing 101 shortlisted titles and the winners of 37 categories in the 49th doing of this program, the entries for which were all published in 2024, a year that somehow seems a decade ago already.
These 37 category winners in scholarly and research publication now become eligible for the four big “awards for excellence,” which are to be announced later. Those four academic sectors are:
- Biological and life sciences
- Humanities
- Physical sciences and mathematics
- Social sciences
Of the winners of each of these four sectors of categories, one will be selected for the RR Hawkins Award. That top award is named for the late Reginald Robert Hawkins (1902-1999), who was instrumental in the New York Public Library’s development and an influence on the quality and prominence of American scholarship.
Syreeta Swann
Syreeta Swann, AAP’s chief operating officer, says, “The 2025 PROSE Awards finalists and category winners significantly showcase a deep commitment to excellence on the part of the professional and scholarly publishing community.
“We congratulate all of our 101 finalists and 37 category winners and look forward to honoring their incredible contributions to their fields and to publishing as a whole.”
Nigel Fletcher-Jones
The program’s perennial chief juror is Nigel Fletcher-Jones.
He says, “This year’s honorees cover an extensive array of academic fields and research topics with incredible skill, continuing to illustrate the complexity and variety of scholarly publishing works.”
“We eagerly anticipate the announcement of the 2025 PROSE Awards winners, and the R.R. Hawkins Award.”
These are the 37 PROSE Award category winners for 2025. The full list of 101 finalists can be found here.
Biological and Life Sciences
Biological and Life SciencesBiology (includes Animal Science and Botany)
Category winner: Why We Die: The New Science of Aging
Venki Ramakrishnan
HarperCollins / William Morrow
Biomedicine and Neuroscience (includes biochemistry and biophysics)
Category winner: The Human Disease: How We Create Pandemics, from Our Bodies to Our Beliefs
Sabrina Sholts
MIT Press
Clinical Medicine
Category winner: Comprehensive Hematology and Stem Cell Research
Nima Rezaei
Elsevier
Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry
Category winner: Out of Her Mind: How We Are Failing Women’s Mental Health and What Must Change
Linda Gask
Cambridge University Press
Nursing and Allied Health Services
Category winner: The Mindful Health Care Professional: A Path to Provider Wellness and Patient-Centered Care
Carmelina D’Arro
Elsevier
Humanities
HumanitiesArt Exhibitions
Category winner: Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies
Dalila Scruggs, Catherine Morris, and Mary Lee Corlett
National Gallery of Art, Washington, and the Brooklyn Museum, New York
Co-published by the University of Chicago Press
Art History and Criticism
Category winner: Momentum: Art and Ecology in Contemporary Latin America
Inés Katzenstein, María Del Carmen Carríon, and Madeline Murphy Turner
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA, New York City)
Biography and Autobiography
Category winner: Squanto: A Native Odyssey
Andrew Lipman
Yale University Press
Biological Anthropology, Archeology and Ancient History
Category winner: Father Time: A Natural History of Men and Babies
Sarah Blaffer Hrdy
Princeton University Press
Classics
Category winner: A Noble Ruin: Mark Antony, Civil War, and the Collapse of the Roman Republic
W. Jeffrey Tatum
Oxford University Press
European History
Category winner: The Basque Witch-Hunt: A Secret History
Jan Machielsen
Bloomsbury Publishing
Language and Linguistics
Category winner: A Practical Guide to Second Language Teaching and Learning
Shawn Loewen and Masatoshi Sato
Cambridge University Press
Literature
Category winner: How to Draw the World: Harold and the Purple Crayon and the Making of a Children’s Classic
Philip Nel
Oxford University Press
Media and Cultural Studies
Category winner: The Flesh of the Matter: A Critical Forum on Hortense Spillers
Margo Natalie Crawford and C. Riley Snorton
Vanderbilt University Press
Music and the Performing Arts
Category winner: Blacksound: Making Race and Popular Music in the United States
Matthew D. Morrison
University of California Press
Nonfiction Graphic Novels
Category winner: Toxic: A Tour of the Ecuadorian Amazon
Amelia Fiske and Jonas Fischer
University of Toronto Press
North American/United States History
Category winner: Freeman’s Challenge: The Murder That Shook America’s Original Prison for Profit
Robin Bernstein
University of Chicago Press
Outstanding Work by a Trade Publisher
Category winner: Takeover: Hitler’s Final Rise to Power
Timothy W. Ryback
Penguin Random House / Knopf
Philosophy
Category winner: Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment
Charles Taylor
Belknap Press
Theology and Religious Studies
Category winner: The Widening of God’s Mercy
Christopher B. Hays and Richard B. Hays
Yale University Press
World History
Category winner: The Cambridge History of the Vietnam War
Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, Edward Miller, Andrew Preston, and Pierre Asselin
Cambridge University Press
Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Physical Sciences and MathematicsChemistry, Physics, Astronomy, and Cosmology
Category winner: The Restless Cell: Continuum Theories of Living Matter
Christina Hueschen and Rob Phillips
Princeton University Press
Computing and Information Sciences
Category winner: The Importance of Being Educable: A New Theory of Human Uniqueness
Leslie Valiant
Princeton University Press
Earth Science
Category winner: Data Science for the Geosciences
Lijing Wang, David Zhen Yin, and Jef Caers
Cambridge University Press
Engineering and Technology
Category winner: Sustainable Innovations in the Textile Industry
Roshan Paul and Thomas Gries
Elsevier Inc.
Environmental Science
Category winner: The Presidents and the Planet: Climate Change Science and Politics from Eisenhower to Bush
Jay Hakes
Louisiana State University Press
History of Science, Medicine, and Technology
Category winner: Tripping on Utopia: Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science
Benjamin Breen
Hachette Book Group / Grand Central Publishing
Mathematics and Statistics
Category winner: Active Statistics
Andrew Gelman and Aki Vehtari
Cambridge University Press
Popular Science and Popular Mathematics
Category winner: Do Plants Know Math?: Unwinding the Story of Plant Spirals, from Leonardo da Vinci to Now
Stéphane Douady, Jacques Dumais, Christophe Golé, and Nancy Pick
Princeton University Press
Social Sciences
Social SciencesArchitecture and Urban Planning
Category winner: Mies van der Rohe: An Architect in His Time
Dietrich Neumann
Yale University Press
Business, Finance, and Management
Category winner: Conscience Incorporated: Pursue Profits While Protecting Human Rights
Michael H. Posner
New York University Press
Cultural Anthropology and Sociology
Category winner: Exit Wounds: How America’s Guns Fuel Violence across the Border
Ieva Jusionyte
University of California Press
Economics
Category winner: Atlas of Finance: Mapping the Global Story of Money
Dariusz Wojcik, Maps and Graphics
James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti
Yale University Press
Education Theory and Practice
Category winner: Class Dismissed: When Colleges Ignore Inequality and Students Pay the Price
Anthony Abraham Jack
Princeton University Press
Government and Politics
Category winner: Takeover: Hitler’s Final Rise to Power
Timothy W. Ryback
Penguin Random House / Knopf
Legal Studies and Criminology
Category winner: Academic Freedom: From Professional Norm to First Amendment Right
David M. Rabban
Harvard University Press
Psychology and Applied Social Work
Category winner: Private Violence: Latin American Women and the Struggle for Asylum
Carol Cleaveland and Michele Waslin
New York University Press
Multi Volume
Category winner: The Cambridge History of the Vietnam War
Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, Edward Miller, Andrew Preston, and Pierre Asselin
Cambridge University Press
Single Volume
Category winner: Atlas of Finance: Mapping the Global Story of Money
Dariusz Wojcik, Maps and Graphics by James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti
Yale University Press
Textbooks
Category winner: The Restless Cell: Continuum Theories of Living Matter
Christina Hueschen and Rob Phillips
Princeton University Press
More from Publishing Perspectives on the Association of American Publishers is here, more on digital publishing is here, more on the annual PROSE Awards is here, and more on publishing and book awards is here.