Washington, DC - Honorable Mentions for the 2019 Grateful American Book Prize will be given to Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Tonya Bolden, co-authors of Dark Sky Rising: Reconstruction And The Dawn Of Jim Crow [Scholastic Focus], and Mike Winchell, author of The Electric War: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, And The Race To Light The World [Henry Holt]. 

Author and publisher David Bruce Smith, who co-founded the Prize with the late Dr. Bruce Cole, a former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, says the grand Prize winner will be announced in the coming days.

School Library Journal cited Dark Sky Rising as “an excellent work on the rise of Jim Crow laws in the South. The authors detail the changing rights of African Americans during the Civil War and the many legal acts that gave rights of citizenship to black people, such as the Emancipation Proclamation; the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution; and the Civil Rights Act of 1875.”

The Journal also praised Winchell’s The Electric War for its “informal tone [that] makes the prose quite inviting and the text…rich with anecdotes, which illustrates the…author's careful research and commitment to storytelling.” 

The winner of the Grateful American Book Prize receives $13,000, a lifetime pass to the New-York Historical Society, and a medallion created by the American artist, Clarice Smith. The October 17th presentation will be at the Corcoran School of the Arts And Design in Washington, D.C. 

The “Honorable Mention” authors receive the medallion, and $500.