Awards, Prizes, Grants

The Edelstein Prize

edelstein plaque
The Edelstein Prize is awarded to the author of an outstanding scholarly book in the history of technology published during the preceding three years (so, for example, books eligible for the 2008 award will have been published in 2005–2007). Non-English language books are eligible for three years following the date of their English translation. Previously known as the Dexter Prize, the Edelstein Prize was established in 1968 through the generosity of the late Sidney Edelstein, a noted expert on the history of dyes and dye processes, founder of the Dexter Chemical Corporation, and 1988 recipient of SHOT's Leonardo da Vinci Award. The prize, donated by Ruth Edelstein Barish and her family in memory of Sidney Edelstein and his commitment to excellence in scholarship in the history of technology, consists of $3500 and a plaque.

Publishers and authors are invited to nominate titles for this prize. To nominate a book, please send one copy to each of the committee members listed below. The deadline for receipt of books is 15 April.

For more information, please contact the committee chair or Amy Bix, SHOT Secretary, 515.294.8469, shot@iastate.edu.

2008 Edelstein Prize Committee

Marty Melosi (chair)
Department of History
University of Houston
556 Agnes Arnold Hall
Houston TX 77204-3003 		Edmund Russell
STS Department
University of Virginia
Thornton Hall
Charlottesville VA 22904-4744
Eda Kranakis
Department of History
University of Ottawa
155 Séraphin Marion St.
P.O. Box 450, Station A
Ottawa Ontario K1N 6N5
Canada 		 

Previous Recipients of the Edelstein (formerly Dexter) Prize

2007 Gregory Clancey, Earthquake Nation: The Cultural Politics of Japanese Seismicity, 1868–1930 (University of California Press, 2006)
2006 Christine Cogdell, Eugenic Design: Streamlining America in the 1930s (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004)
2005 Emily Thompson, The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900-1933 (MIT Press, 2002)
2004 Angela Lakwete, Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003)
2003 Edmund Russell, War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with Chemicals from World War I to Silent Spring (Cambridge University Press, 2001)
2002 Martin V. Melosi, The Sanitary City: Urban Infrastructure in America from Colonial Times to the Present (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000)
2001 Gabrielle Hecht, The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity after World War II (The MIT Press, 1998)
2000 Paul Israel, Edison, A Life of Invention (New York: John Wiley, 1998)
1999 Francesca Bray, Technology and Gender: Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial China (University of California Press, 1997)
1998 Ken Alder, Engineering the Revolution: Arms and Enlightenment in France, 1763-1815 (Princeton University Press, 1997)
1997 Thomas J. Misa, A Nation of Steel: The Making of Modern America, 1865-1925 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995); and Michael J. Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich: Peenemünde and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era (Harvard University Press, 1995)
1996 Jeffrey Meikle, American Plastic: A Cultural History (Rutgers University Press, 1995)
1995 Claude Fischer, America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940 (University of California Press, 1992)
1994 John H. White, Jr., The American Railroad Freight Car: From the Wood-Car to the Coming of Steel (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992)
1993 David Nye, Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology (MIT Press, 1990)
1992 Donald Reid, Paris Sewers and Sewermen: Realities and Representations (Harvard University Press, 1991)
1991 Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance (Cornell University Press, 1989)
1990 Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West (Cambridge University Press, 1989)
1989 Judith A. McGaw, Most Wonderful Machine: Mechanization and Social Change in Berkshire Paper Making, 1801-1885 (Princeton University Press, 1987), and Anthony F. C. Wallace, St. Clair: A Nineteenth-century Coal Town's Experience with Disaster-prone Industry (Knopf, 1987)