For the first time, we feature the winners of many of the world’s most prestigious historical awards. The list gives a glimpse of the direction in which world historiography is heading. If we had to look for a common point between the distinguished books and the problems they raise, it would be the disagreement with an immutable image of the past and the desire to update it.

United States

Pulitzer Prize for History – since 1917, a jury of the College of Journalism at Columbia University in New York has awarded prizes to authors in the fields of literature, journalism and music. One of the categories is to honor the author of the best history book dedicated to the history of the United States. In 2022 they received the award ex aequo two New York University historians: Ada Ferrer for the book “Cuba: An American History” (Cuba: An American Story) and Nicole Eustache rear “Covered in Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America” (Under Cover of Night: Murder and Indigenous Justice in Colonial America.)

Eustache’s book revolves around the murder of an Iroquois hunter in 1722 by two European settlers. The apparently insignificant crime served the author as a starting point for confronting two extremely different conceptions of justice and the forms of its administration. The one represented by Native Americans was an age-old chain of rituals, consisting of confession, sympathy for victims and their families, reparation, and ceremonies to cement weakened bonds of trust. At the other extreme was the Anglo-European idea of ​​justice, based on individual responsibility, limited to the fault of the direct perpetrator and ignoring the need for reconciliation.

Original text title: “The Magnificent Eight”