The Fort Plain Museum and Historical Park has announced the finalists for the 2026 James Kirby Martin Book Prize.
The award honors the memory and scholarly contributions of the late historian James Kirby Martin, the Hugh Roy and Lilli Cranz Cullen University Professor of History at the University of Houston and a member of the Fort Plain Museum board.
The annual award recognizes the best book of the year on the history of the American Revolution. The Martin Prize of $5,000 and the Honorable Mention of $1,000 are funded through the generosity of the Martin family.
The selection of the Martin Prize finalists was the work of an award committee of five nationally recognized historians of the American Revolutionary era. They reviewed eighteen nominated books, from which they made their selection of the following five finalists:
Richard Bell, The American Revolution and the Fate of the World (Riverhead/Penguin)
Trevor Burnard & Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy, Republic and Empire: Crisis, Revolution, and America’s Early Independence (Yale University Press)
Lauren Duval, The Home Front: Revolutionary Households, Military Occupation, and the Making of American Independence (University of North Carolina Press)
Travis Glasson, Nobody Men: Neutrality, Loyalties, and Family in the American Revolution (Yale University Press)
Ronald Angelo Johnson, Entangled Alliances: Racialized Freedom and Atlantic Diplomacy During the American Revolution (Cornell University Press)
The Martin Book Prize awards will be presented at the Fort Plain Museum’s up-coming American Revolutionary War Conference 250, May 28-31, 2026.
Following the award ceremony, there will be a Cocktail Reception with a Meet and Greet with award winners and conference speakers at the Museum. The award ceremony and reception are included in the conference ticket price.
Learn more about the conference here.
Read more about the American Revolution in New York State.
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