Library News

2022 Ruth Ratner Miller Award for Excellence in American History

Saturday, October 15, 7:00—9:00 p.m.

Goodwin Forum, Main Library & On Zoom  
 

Miller Award Event Zoom Link 
When: Oct 15, 2022 07:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Please click the link below to join the webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82168673150?pwd=ZExLbi9UaFpzYjNYelBXOXdndVJKQT09
Passcode: 525735

Please note -

  • For in-person attendance, please buy tickets at the Main Library or the Barrow Bookstore. You do not need to register. $15 per ticket ($5 for students).
  • For free virtual attendance on Zoom, please visit here to register online so that we can send you the Zoom link. Thank you. 

Join us to honor the 2022 Ruth Ratner Miller Award for Excellence in American History Winner, Dr. Sean Wilentz, Professor of American History at Princeton University. Professor Wilentz will be introduced by Professor Maya Jasanoff (in a pre-recorded video). 

The Ruth Ratner Miller Memorial Award for Excellence in American History was established in 1998 by Richard Miller, and is sponsored by her four children, to honor the life of their mother, Ruth Ratner Miller. It has been presented by the Friends of the Concord Free Public Library since 2001.

Dr. Ruth Ratner Miller (1925-1996) believed passionately that understanding history was not merely desirable but a civic and religious duty. To that end, she was an original member of the Holocaust Commission and a founding trustee of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. After raising four children, she returned to Case Western Reserve University and earned a Ph.D. in Education. [Read More About Ruth Ratner Miller]

Sean Wilentz is the George Henry Davis 1886 Professor of American History at Princeton University. His primary research interests include U.S. social and political history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He has written numerous award-winning books and articles including The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln, which was honored with the Bancroft Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His writings on American music have earned him two Grammy nominations and two Deems-Taylor-ASCAP awards. Professor Wilentz is currently at work on The Triumph of American Antislavery, a companion volume to The Rise of American Democracy, which will offer a comprehensive political history of the antislavery movement from its seventeenth-century origins to the eradication of slavery in 1865.

Tickets for the in-person event are $15 ($5 for students). They can be purchased (cash or check only) at the Barrow Bookstore or (using cash, check or PayPal) at the Main Library's Circulation Desk. 

[Register here to receive the Zoom link to watch the event live online

The event is generously sponsored by the Friends of the Concord Free Public Library.

Videos of many of the past Miller Award events can be seen on the YouTube Ruth Ratner Miller Award playlist

Past Miller Award Recipients are:  

Past Miller Award recipients:
1998 Stephen Ambrose
1999 James M. McPherson
2000 Thomas H. O'Connor
2001 Daniel J. Boorstin
2002 Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
2003 Sandra Day O'Connor
2004 Edmund S. Morgan
2005 David Halberstam
2006 Doris Kearns Goodwin
2007 John Hope Franklin
2008 David Hackett Fischer
2009 David Herbert Donald
2010 Bernard Bailyn
2011 Pauline Maier
2012 Eric Foner
2013 Drew Gilpin Faust
2014 Nathaniel Philbrick
2015 Robert Dallek
2016 Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
2017 Gordon S. Wood
2018 Annette Gordon-Reed
2019 John Stauffer
2020 Jill Lepore
2021 Heather Cox Richardson
2022 Sean Wilentz