Neustadt book prize awarded to Professor Jeffreys-Jones
Professor Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones has been awarded the American Politics Group Richard Neustadt Book Prize 2013 for his recent monograph. (Published 17 November 2014)
The prestigious prize is announced each year at the annual colloquium of the American Politics group held in the United States Embassy in London.
Professor Jeffreys-Jones, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Edinburgh, was present to receive the prize on Friday for his book The American Left: Its Impact on Politics and Society since 1900 (Edinburgh University Press, 2013).
About the book
Conservatives argue that the left has had an excessive influence in America, but few others extend that credit. The American Left details the actual achievements ranging from effective opposition to militarism to the winning of racial justice.
It shows how the socialists of the Old Left gave way by the 1960s to the anti-war militants of the New Left, who in turn helped spawn a “Newer Left” that moved beyond the by now largely realised socialist agenda.
The book argues that the post-2000 Bush administration succumbed to the socialism it despised, and that Barack Obama has been a president for the left.
About the American Politics Group Richard Neustadt Book Prize
The prize is named after Richard E. Neustadt (1919-2003), author of Presidential Power (1960), advisor to President John F. Kennedy, founder of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and husband of Shirley Williams.
It is awarded to the “best (UK) book in the field of US government and politics (including political history) published in the previous calendar year”.