Awards highlights: Cambridge publishing "leading the pack" in 2023
Books published by Cambridge have won awards for their unique contributions to their fields
As the year draws to a close, it’s a chance to reflect on some of our recent publishing highlights and our community of authors.
In the past three months, Cambridge books have been recognised by organisations including the American History Association, the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, and Choice.
Just this month, 38 of Cambridge’s books have been named as Outstanding Academic Titles in the Choice awards, the American Library Association’s (ALA) prestigious annual list.
Outstanding Academic Titles are awarded to the best scholarly titles reviewed by Choice. These titles are chosen for their excellence in scholarship and presentation, the significance of their contribution to the field, their originality and value as an essential treatment of their subject, and their significance in building undergraduate collections.
Cambridge books have also been garnering plaudits of other awarding bodies. Here are a few that stand out:
Cambridge awards highlights
American Historical Association awards
The AHA recognises a wide range of historical work, which can take the form of an exceptional book in the field, distinguished teaching and mentoring in the classroom, film, or digital projects and resources.
This year, the AHA awarded the prestigious James A. Rawley Prize to Adriana Chira for her book Patchwork Freedoms: Law, Slavery, and Race beyond Cuba's Plantations, published by Cambridge. Chira’s book provides a nuanced perspective on the role of law in regulating the lives and possibilities of freedom and enslaved people in 19th-century Santiago de Cuba.
The Modern Language Association Prizes
The MLA Prizes recognise excellent in humanities publishing. Founded in 1883, the MLA provides opportunities for its members to share their scholarly findings and teaching experiences with colleagues and to discuss trends in the academy. Its members work to strengthen the study and teaching of language and literature.
This year, the MLA had exciting news for Cambridge. The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Aphra Behn, volume IV: Plays, 1682–1696 was selected as the winner of the MLA Prize for a Scholarly Edition competition, and The Cambridge Centenary Ulysses received an honourable mention.
The Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies
ASEES is a nonprofit, non-political, scholarly society, and the leading international organisation dedicated to the advancement of knowledge about Central Asia, the Caucasus, Russia, and Eastern Europe in regional and global contexts. It has been active for over 70 years.
In 2023, two Cambridge books were recognised in ASEES prestigious annual awards: The Estate Origins of Democracy in Russia: From Imperial Bourgeoisie to Post-Communist Middle Class, and Tunguska: A Siberian Mystery and Its Environmental Legacy.
American Political Science Association awards
APSA is the leading professional organisation for the study of political science, bringing together political scientists from all fields of inquiry, regions, and occupation to deepen collective understanding of politics, democracy, and citizenship worldwide.
APSA awards exist to recognise excellence in the political science profession, honouring the work of scholars who make outstanding contributions to political science research, teaching, and service.
Cambridge published a range of books in 2023 that won APSA awards of received honourable mentions.
Winners:
· The Ghostwriters: Lawyers and the Politics behind the Judicial Construction of Europe, by Tommaso Pavone
· Frenemies: How Social Media Polarizes America, by Jaime E. Settle
· The Advantage of Disadvantage: Costly Protest and Political Representation for Marginalized Groups, by LaGina Gause
· When Democracies Deliver: Governance Reform in Latin America, by Katherine Bersch
· Undue Process: Persecution and Punishment in Autocratic Courts, by Fiona Shen-Bayh
· Closed for Democracy: How Mass School Closure Undermines the Citizenship of Black Americans, by Sally A. Nuamah
· Monitors and Meddlers: How Foreign Actors Influence Local Trust in Elections, by Sarah Sunn Bush and Lauren Prather
· Experimental Thinking: A Primer on Social Science Experiments, by James N. Druckman
Honourable Mentions:
· Before The West: The Rise and Fall of Eastern World Orders, by Ayşe Zarakol
· Property Without Rights: Origins and Consequences of the Property Rights Gap, by Michael Albertus
· Colonial Institutions and Civil War: Indirect Rule and Maoist Insurgency in India, by Shivaji Mukherjee
· Making Bureaucracy Work: Norms, Education and Public Service Delivery in Rural India, by Akshay Mangla
Choice awards
As for the Choice awards, the complete list of Outstanding Academic Title winners published by Cambridge is as follows – it shows Cambridge’s commitment to publishing important books related to topics as diverse and important as sustainability, 20th-century history, and mathematics.
1. Alligators in the Arctic and how to avoid them: science, economics and the challenge of catastrophic climate change, by Peter Dorman
2. American song and struggle from Columbus to World War II: a cultural history, by Will Kaufman
3. Ascending order: rising powers and the politics of status in international institutions, by Rohan Mukherjee
4. Black Shakespeare: reading and misreading race, by Ian Smith
5. China's Cold War science diplomacy, by Gordon Barrett
6. Data science in context: foundations, challenges, opportunities, by Alfred Z. Spector
7. Feminist judgments: rewritten criminal law opinions
8. Global warming of 1.5˚ C: an IPCC special report on impacts of global warming
9. Israel's moment: international support for and opposition to establishing the Jewish state, 1945 -1949, by Jeffrey Herf
10. Judaism, antisemitism, and Holocaust: making the connections, by David Patterson
11. Managed dissent: the law of public protest, by Timothy Zick
12. Marijuana on my mind: the science and mystique of cannabis, by Timmen Cermak
13. Mark Twain, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, and the head readers: literature, humor, and faddish phrenology, by Stanley Finger
14. Mycorrhizal dynamics in ecological systems, by Michael F. Allen
15. Neighborhood watch: Policing White Spaces in America, by Shawn E. Fields
16. Pandora's toolbox: the hopes and hazards of climate intervention, by Wake Smith
17. Pillars of social psychology: stories and retrospectives
18. Pre-Islamic Arabia: societies, politics, cults and identities during late antiquity, by Valentina A. Grasso
19. Star noise: discovering the radio universe, by Kenneth I. Kellermann
20. Stealth lobbying: interest group influence and health care reform, by Amy Melissa McKay
21. Survivors: Warsaw under Nazi Occupation, by Jadwiga Biskupska
22. The art of mathematics - take two: tea time in Cambridge, by Béla Bollobás
23. The Babel lexicon of language
24. The British home front and the First World War, by Hew Strachan
25. The Cambridge Companion to Plato
26. The Cambridge Handbook of Stigma and Mental Health
27. The climate demon: past, present, and future of climate prediction, by R. Saravanan
28. The everyday crusade: Christian nationalism in American politics, by Eric L. McDaniel, Irfan Nooruddin, and Allyson F. Shortle
29. The Kingdom of Darkness: Bayle, Newton, and the Emancipation of the European Mind from Philosophy, by Dmitri Levitin
30. The Life, Extinction, and Rebreeding of Quagga Zebras: Significance for Conservation, by Peter Heywood
31. The Living Planet: the State of the World's Wildlife, by Norman Maclean
32. The Love Jones Cohort: Single and Living Alone in the Black Middle Class, by Kris Marsh
33. The power of the people: everyday resistance and dissent in the making of modern Turkey, 1923–38, by Murat Metinsoy
34. The Practice and Problems of Transnational Counter-Terrorism, by Fiona de Londras
35. The Quantified Worker: Law and Technology in the Modern Workplace, by Ifeoma Ajunwa
36. Understanding How Science Explains the World, by Kevin MacCain
37. We're not ok: Black faculty experiences and higher education strategies
38. Why DNA?: from DNA sequence to biological complexity, by Andrew Travers
“We’re leading the pack”
Ben Denne,
Director of Publishing at Cambridge
Ben Denne, Director of Publishing at Cambridge, commented on the achievements of the Press’s publishing this year.
“It is very inspiring and encouraging to see us ending this often-challenging year with another armful of prizes for our publishing.
“All are significant, but I do want to draw attention to the Choice Awards, where we continued our longstanding run – and, once again, we were among the top prize-winners in the sector. These library awards are particularly important to us as a publisher with a well-deserved and hard-won reputation as a leader in research. There is absolutely no surprise that we’re leading the pack, but it is really nice to see it happen, and furthermore to see it happen year-on-year.”
A further list of award-winning books published by Cambridge can be found in our annual report.
Well done to all our authors recognised by awards in 2023!
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