Each year the APG awards the Richard E. Neustadt Book Prize. The 2022 award went to:

A Nation of Veterans: War, Citizenship, and the Welfare State in Modern America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022) by Olivier Burtin

The Neustadt book prize committee of the American Politics Group of the Political Studies Association is delighted to announce that this year’s Richard Neustadt Book Prize has been awarded to Olivier Burtin for his monograph A Nation of Veterans: War, Citizenship, and the Welfare State in Modern America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022). Dr. Burtin is based at Université de Picardie Jules Verne, Amiens, France. This is the first time the award has been won outright by an academic based outside the UK.

In a competitive field, which testified to the quality of the research on US politics being done in the UK and Europe, this work stood out in terms of both significance and intellectual rigour.

A Nation of Veterans is a careful analysis of the debate over veterans’ benefits in the second half of the twentieth century. Veterans’ benefits, as Paul Starr wrote in the 1970s, ‘represent the most highly elaborated form the welfare state has reached in the America’. This book shows how this came to be. The path was not inevitable. Many social democrats, including Franklin Roosevelt, were suspicious of according ‘martial citizenship’ an elevated status. Yet, through the lobbying of veterans’ groups, grassroots activism, and generational change, veterans’ benefits have become not only not controversial but so basic an element of American social policy that they are rarely remarked upon. This book is a significant contribution to the areas of American social policy, interest groups, grassroots politics, and military history.

The APG thanks the University of Cambridge Mellon fund for its generous support.

Original 2022 Call below:

Nominations Invited for:
 

The American Politics Group’s 2022 Richard E. Neustadt Book Prize

 Supported by the University of Cambridge Mellon Fund

 
The Richard E. Neustadt Book Prize, worth £500, is well established as the top prize in the UK devoted to publications on US politics.

The APG’s Richard Neustadt Book Prize is awarded annually. The invitation to submit titles for consideration will be made in autumn, with a deadline for submission at the end of the following January. Candidates will be contacted with the results as soon as possible after the closing date. Information will appear on this website and in the APG Newsletter. (subscribe here)
 
In recognition of the valuable contribution made over the years to APG’s work by our colleagues in other European countries, eligibility is again extended to include authors based at any university in Europe as well as the UK.
 
Books published in 2022 are eligible.
 
Works nominated for the 2022 Richard E. Neustadt Book Prize must be:

• in the field of US government and politics (including political history and foreign policy)
• published in the calendar year 2022 and in the English language
• authored by an academic employed at a university in the UK or mainland Europe
• available in hard copy
• entered for consideration by the closing date of 31 January 2023

 
The 2022 prize will be awarded by the panel of judges to the book that they consider to be the best from those nominated.
 
The £500 prize is generously supported and fully funded by the University of Cambridge Mellon Fund.
 
Entrants for the prize should arrange for four copies of their book to be sent to the chair of judges at the following address:
 
Dr Ilaria Di Gioia
School of Law, Birmingham City University
The Curzon Building, 4 Cardigan Street
Birmingham
B4 7BD
United Kingdom
 
Email: Ilaria.DI-GIOIA@bcu.ac.uk