A prize recognising the best book in the field of US government and politics has been awarded to a Senior Lecturer in American History at the University of Sussex.
Dr Tom Davies was awarded the 2018 Richard E. Neustadt Book Prize for Mainstreaming Black Power by the American Politics Group.
The prize, given annually, is always awarded to an academic permanently employed in a UK university.
It aims to recognise the best book in the field of American government and politics, including political history and foreign policy.
Dr Tom Davies said: “I’m delighted that Mainstreaming Black Power has been awarded the Richard E. Neustadt Book Prize for many reasons but particularly because the American Politics Group is home to scholars with a deep interest in US government and politics from a range of disciplines, not just historians.
“To have my book resonate with, and be endorsed by, people in different fields is something I am especially proud of.”
Mainstreaming Black Power examines how mainstream American politicians and institutions responded to the emergence of Black Power in the mid-1960s and traces the longer term consequences of their response, in particular in how it affected black politics and urban society.
One of the book’s reviewers has described it as “the most substantive and significant study of the impact of Black Power on the American political mainstream,” while another praised the book for “complicat[ing] our understanding of Black Power as an ideology and as a political movement” and offering “a fresh perspective on inequality and exclusion in post-1960s America.”