Indiana University Press is proud that our books have received over 60 awards (and counting!) during the 2020-2021 calendar year. Many congratulations to our well-deserving authors!
Award-Winning Books
Winner: Army Historical Foundation Distinquished Book Awards
General John A. Rawlins
No Ordinary Man
Allen J. Ottens
No one succeeds alone, and Ulysses S. Grant was no exception. From the earliest days of the Civil War to the heights of Grant's power in the White House, John A. Rawlins was ever at Grant's side. Yet Rawlins's role in Grant's career is often overlooked, and he barely received mention in Grant's own two-volume Memoirs.
General John A. Rawlins: No Ordinary Man by Allen J. Ottens is the first major biography of Rawlins in over a century and traces his rise to assistant adjutant general and ultimately Grant's secretary of war. Ottens presents the portrait of a man who teamed with Grant, who submerged his needs and ambition in the service of Grant, and who at times served as the doubter who questioned whether Grant possessed the background to tackle the great responsibilities of the job. Rawlins played a pivotal role in Grant's relatively small staff, acting as administrator, counselor, and defender of Grant's burgeoning popularity.
Rawlins qualifies as a true patriot, a man devoted to the Union and devoted to Grant. His is the story of a man who persevered in wartime and during the tumultuous years of Reconstruction and who, despite a ravaging disease that would cut short his blossoming career, grew to become a proponent of the personal and citizenship rights of those formerly enslaved.
General John A. Rawlins will prove to be a fascinating and essential read for all who have an interest in leadership, the Civil War, or Ulysses S. Grant.
Winner: Janovics Center Best Book
Casting a Giant Shadow
The Transnational Shaping of Israeli Cinema
Rachel S. Harris, Dan Chyutin, Zachary Ingle, Ohad Landesman, Shmulik Duvdevani, Neta Alexander, Joshua Beaty, Nava Dushi, Yael Munk, Yaron Peleg, Ariel M. Sheetrit, Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann, Pablo Utin, Raz Yosef, Boaz Hagin, Mary N. Layoun, Julie Grimmeisen, Yaron Shemer, Anat Dan
Film came to the territory that eventually became Israel not long after the medium was born. Casting a Giant Shadow is a collection of articles that embraces the notion of transnationalism to consider the limits of what is "Israeli" within Israeli cinema.
As the State of Israel developed, so did its film industries. Moving beyond the early films of the Yishuv, which focused on the creation of national identity, the industry and its transnational ties became more important as filmmakers and film stars migrated out and foreign films, filmmakers, and actors came to Israel to take advantage of high-quality production values and talent. This volume, edited by Rachel Harris and Dan Chyutin, uses the idea of transnationalism to challenge the concept of a singular definition of Israeli cinema.
Casting a Giant Shadow offers a new understanding of how cinema has operated artistically and structurally in terms of funding, distribution, and reception. The result is a thorough investigation of the complex structure of the transnational and its impact on national specificity when considered on the global stage.
Commended: Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research
Atomic Tunes
The Cold War in American and British Popular Music
Tim Smolko, Joanna Smolko
What is the soundtrack for a nuclear war?
During the Cold War, over 500 songs were written about nuclear weapons, fear of the Soviet Union, civil defense, bomb shelters, McCarthyism, uranium mining, the space race, espionage, the Berlin Wall, and glasnost. This music uncovers aspects of these world-changing events that documentaries and history books cannot. In Atomic Tunes, Tim and Joanna Smolko explore everything from the serious to the comical, the morbid to the crude, showing the widespread concern among musicians coping with the effect of communism on American society and the threat of a nuclear conflict of global proportions.
Atomic Tunes presents a musical history of the Cold War, analyzing the songs that capture the fear of those who lived under the shadow of Stalin, Sputnik, mushroom clouds, and missiles.
Winner: Royal Dragonfly Best Book - Nonfiction
Heart of a Hoosier
A Year of Inspiration from IU Men's Basketball
Del Duduit, Michelle Medlock Adams
Five NCAA Championships, 22 Big Ten Conference Championships—this is the candy-striped legacy of the Indiana University men's basketball team. In its 120-year history, Indiana basketball has become a giant in college basketball and earned a legion of fans.
In Heart of a Hoosier: A Year of Inspiration from IU Men's Basketball, authors Del Duduit and Michelle Medlock Adams show readers how the famous moments and personalities of the Indiana Hoosiers can inspire them to reach for success, overcome adversity, be a great team member, and more. Readers will be inspired by a year's worth of stories featuring fierce rivalries with Purdue and Kentucky and legendary players and coaches such as Steve Alford, Isiah Thomas, Calbert Cheaney, George McGinnis, Branch McCracken, and Bobby Knight.
Heart of a Hoosier will entertain and motivate every fan who bleeds Cream & Crimson. Relive the triumphs, groan at the losses, and revel in great traditions!
Winner: Ray and Pat Browne Culture Award - Bests Critically Edited Volume
Reclaiming Popular Documentary
Christie Milliken, Steve F. Anderson, Ezra Winton, Patricia Aufderheide, Zoë Druick, Devon Coutts, Sabiha Ahmad Khan, Anthony Kinik, Michael Brendan Baker, Allison de Fren, Jonathan Kahana, Shilyh Warren, S. Topiary Landberg, Landon Palmer, Dylan Nelson, Alexandra Juhasz, Rick Prelinger, George S. Larke-Walsh
The documentary has achieved rising popularity over the past two decades thanks to streaming services like Netflix and Hulu. Despite this, documentary studies still tends to favor works that appeal primarily to specialists and scholars.
Reclaiming Popular Documentary reverses this long-standing tendency by showing that documentaries can be—and are—made for mainstream or commercial audiences. Editors Christie Milliken and Steve Anderson, who consider popular documentary to be a subfield of documentary studies, embrace an expanded definition of popular to acknowledge the many evolving forms of documentary, such as branded entertainment, fictional hybrids, and works with audience participation. Together, these essays address emerging documentary forms—including web-docs, virtual reality, immersive journalism, viral media, interactive docs, and video-on-demand—and offer the critical tools viewers need to analyze contemporary documentaries and consider how they are persuaded by and represented in documentary media.
By combining perspectives of scholars and makers, Reclaiming Popular Documentary brings new understandings and international perspectives to familiar texts using critical models that will engage media scholars and fans alike.