Peter J. Gomes Memorial Book Prize Awarded to Robert A. Gross
The MHS has awarded the 2022 Peter J. Gomes Memorial Book Prize to Robert A. Gross for his book The Transcendentalists and Their World, published in 2021 by Macmillan Publishers. The Peter J. Gomes Memorial Book Prize is given to the best nonfiction work on the history of Massachusetts published during the preceding year.
After reviewing 13 submissions that interpret the history of Massachusetts through a wide range of subjects and time periods, the Peter J. Gomes Book Prize selection committee chose The Transcendentalists and Their World as the 2022 winner. In Transcendentalists, the sequel to his Bancroft-prize winning work, The Minutemen and Their World (1976), the selection committee summarizes, “Gross examines how Concord evolved after the Revolution to encompass a new social order built on individual freedom, voluntary association, economic innovation, social mobility, and greater involvement in the wider world.”
In its unanimous decision, the selection committee members explained their decision:
“Gross’s book builds upon deep research into a wide range of materials about an equally wide range of topics, offering marvelously detailed descriptions of neighborhoods, schools, churches, Masonic lodges, lyceums, and debating clubs, as well as businesses ranging from grape growing to pencil making and vivid portraits. But Transcendentalists is much more than a carefully observed local history rendered with compelling details. It also traces the impact of broader developments on the community as religious groups, political parties, and reform movements all attempted to shape and sway the community. And, as if this were not enough, Gross’s book firmly places Emerson and Thoreau in the midst of this changes as they moved back to Concord. As Emerson developed a career as a lecturer and Thoreau spent time at Emerson’s house and at Walden Pond, they began to mold new ways of thinking that drew not only from broader intellectual currents, but also the smaller world of Concord.
The depth and complexity of this vision, presented in elegant and exemplary prose—rich, clear, and readable—make Robert A. Gross’s The Transcendentalists and Their World a worthy recipient of the 2022 Gomes Prize.”
About Robert A. Gross
Robert A. Gross is the James L. and Shirley A. Draper Professor of Early American History Emeritus at the University of Connecticut. He is the author of The Minutemen and Their World (1976), which won the Bancroft Prize; Books and Libraries in Thoreau’s Concord (1988); and The Transcendentalists and Their World (2021). With Mary Kelley, he is the coeditor of An Extensive Republic: Print, Culture, and Society in the New Nation, 1790–1840 (2010). A former assistant editor of Newsweek, he has written for such periodicals as Esquire, Harper’s Magazine, The Boston Globe, and The New York Times, and his essays have appeared in The American Scholar, The New England Quarterly, Raritan, and The Yale Review.
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.
