Defying Empire: Trading with the Enemy in Colonial New York has been unanimously voted as a finalist for this year's Francis Parkman Prize.
The following citation will be entered in the minutes of the annual dinner meeting of the Society of American Historians for 2009.
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Thomas M. Truxes, DEFYING EMPIRE: TRADING WITH THE ENEMY IN COLONIAL NEW
YORK (Yale University Press):
From his opening description of the October night in 1759 when New Yorkers celebrated the fall of Quebec to his account of the trials, three years later, which disclosed that some of New York's most prominent merchants had traded with the enemy throughout the Seven Years' War, Thomas Truxes
holds the reader in thrall with a tale of enterprise, deceit, and revenge as compelling as a first-rate novel. Few writers can create history with such narrative drive and populate it with characters so vividly realized; fewer still can do it without sacrificing the rigor and integrity of their scholarship. Thomas Truxes does it all in a book that can be read as much for delight as for enlightenment. DEFYING EMPIRE is a remarkable achievement.
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Out of over 200 entries (a record number of submissions for the award) the last three finalists are DEFYING EMPIRE, WAR OF A THOUSAND DESERTS: INDIAN RAIDS AND THE U.S.-MEXICAN WAR by Brian DeLay; and ON ZION'S MOUNT: MORMONS, INDIANS, AND THE AMERICAN LANDSCAPE by Jared Farmer. All three were so eminently prizeworthy that the panel found it almost impossible to distinguish between them. In the end they settled on Farmer, but remained so impressed by DEFYING EMPIRE and DeLay's books that they insisted that they be designated as named finalists, something that the Society permits only in cases where the jury members believe that the books are of exceptional merit.
Congratulations to Tom, on a splendid book.
