Peter J. Gomes Memorial Book Prize Announced
Bruce Dorsey recognized for Murder in a Mill Town: Sex, Faith, and the Crime That Captivated a Nation
The Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS) has announced the 2024 Peter J. Gomes Memorial Book Prize will be presented to Bruce Dorsey for his book Murder in a Mill Town: Sex, Faith, and the Crime That Captivated a Nation, published in 2023 by Oxford University Press. The Gomes Prize is given to the best nonfiction work on the history of Massachusetts published during the preceding year. Dorsey will receive the award at an event in 2025.
After reviewing 14 submissions that interpret the history of Massachusetts through a wide range of subjects and time periods, the Peter J. Gomes Book Prize selection committee, composed entirely of non-MHS scholars, chose Murder in a Mill Town as the 2024 winner. The committee members declared Murder in a Mill Town “an expertly narrated microhistory with a wide historiographical reach that illuminates important changes in gender, religion, and labor in nineteenth-century Massachusetts and New England” and “were deeply impressed by the Bruce Dorsey’s command of the vast quantity of surviving sources on the 1832 murder of Sarah Cornell and his ability to speak through them in his own voice.”
“Transcending its tight, narrow New England focus,” the committee concludes that “the book fulfils the promise of intensely focused micro- and regional history to illustrate large themes, national developments. Dorsey tells an enthralling story complete with major and minor characters, rising and falling action, engaging dialogue, and dramatic tension.” One committee member called the prize winner, “One of the best books I’ve ever read.”
Bruce Dorsey is Professor of History at Swarthmore College where he teaches courses on American history, memory, and popular culture. His research interests include the history of gender and sexuality as well as popular culture, religion, and social movements. He is the author of the award-winning Reforming Men and Women: Gender in the Antebellyum City (Cornell University Press, 2022) and the co-editor of Crosscurrents in American Culture (Houghton Mifflin, 2009).
About the Peter J. Gomes Memorial Book Prize
The Peter J. Gomes Memorial Book Prize, for the best nonfiction work on the history of Massachusetts published during the preceding year, honors the memory of a respected Harvard scholar and beloved Fellow of the MHS. Peter J. Gomes (1942-2011) was elected to the MHS in 1976 and joined the Board of Overseers in 2010. He was Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church at Harvard University.
