Kathleen DuVal

American historian Kathleen DuVal has won the $75,000 (U.S.) Cundill History Prize for 2024.

The announcement was made at an event in Montreal on Oct. 30 by jury chair Rana Mitter. DuVal was named the winner for her book Native Nations: A Millenium in North America (Penguin Random House). The book is a 1,000-year history of North America.

DuVal teaches early American and American Indian history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her previous works include Independence Lost, a finalist for the George Washington Prize, and The Native Ground: Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the Continent.

“One of the most wonderful things about Native Nations by Kathleen DuVal is that it brings unexpected and, to many readers, unknown aspects of that story, to prominence,” Mitter said in a press release. “She does this by bringing in historians and analysts of the Indigenous American experience from within their own scholarship, bringing the story to the forefront of our wider understanding in this huge sweeping history that starts more than 1,000 years ago and brings us up to the present day.”

The Cundill prize is administered by McGill University and awarded annually to a book that embodies historical scholarship, originality, literary quality, and broad appeal.

DuVal was one of three finalists for this year’s prize. The other two, Gary J. Bass (Judgement at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia, Picador/Pan Macmillan) and Dylan C. Penningroth (Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights, Liveright Publishing), were each awarded $10,000 (U.S.).

The three finalists were chosen from an eight-book shortlist announced last month. The jury for this year’s prize is comprised of chair Mitter, Canadian journalist Stephanie Nolen, Nicole Eustace, Moses Ochonu, and Rebecca L. Spang.