D.B. Hardeman Prize

The D.B. Hardeman Prize is a cash prize awarded annually by the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation for the best book that furthers the study of the U.S. Congress in the fields of biography, history, journalism, and political science. Submissions are judged on the basis of five criteria: (1) contribution to scholarship, (2) contribution to the public's understanding of Congress, (3) literary craftsmanship, (4) originality, and (5) depth of research. Members of the national selection committee are: Senator Tom Daschle; Lee Hamilton, Director of The Center on Congress; Thomas Mann of The Brookings Institution; Leslie Sanchez of Impacto Group; and Nancy Beck Young of The University of Houston.^[1]

D. Barnard Hardeman, Jr. (1914-1981) was a politician, political scholar, journalist and teacher. He graduated from the University of Texas and the University of Texas Law School and served in the U.S. Army during World War II. Hardeman served in the 52nd and 54th Legislatures representing Grayson and Collin counties in the Texas House of Representatives.^[2] Between 1958 and 1961, he worked as an assistant to Sam Rayburn, Speaker of the House, and was Rayburn's official biographer. ^[3] An avid bibliophile whose book collection numbered more than ten thousand volumes,^[4] Hardeman bequeathed his collection of American biographies and political history to the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas.

Recipients

• 1980 Richard F. Fenno Jr., Home Style: House Members in Their Districts, Little, Brown and Company
• 1982 Allen Schick, Congress and Money: Budgeting, Spending and Taxing, The Urban Institute
• 1984 James L. Sundquist, The Decline and Resurgence of Congress, Brookings Institution Press
• 1986 David Oshinsky, A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy, The Free Press
• 1988 Paul Light, Artful Work: The Politics of Social Security Reform, Random House
• 1990 Christopher H. Foreman, Jr., Signals From the Hill: Congressional Oversight and the Challenge of Social Regulation, Yale University Press
• 1992 Barbara Sinclair, The Transformation of the U.S. Senate, The Johns Hopkins University Press
• 1994 Gilbert C. Fite, Richard B. Russell, Jr., Senator From Georgia, The University of North Carolina Press
• 1995 Carol M. Swain, Black Faces, Black Interests: The Representation of African Americans in Congress, Harvard University Press
• 1995 John Jacobs, A Rage for Justice: The Passion and Politics of Phillip Burton, University of California Press
• 1996 William Lee Miller, Arguing About Slavery: The Great Battle in the United States Congress, Alfred A. Knopf
• 1997 Robert V. Remini, Daniel Webster: The Man and His Time, W. W. Norton and Company
• 1998 Julian Zelizer, Taxing America: Wilbur D. Mills, Congress, and the State, 1945-1975, Cambridge University Press
• 1999 Frances E. Lee and Bruce I. Oppenheimer, Sizing Up the Senate: The Unequal Consequences of Equal Representation, The University of Chicago Press
• 2000 Nancy Beck Young, Wright Patman: Populism, Liberalism, & the American Dream, Southern Methodist University Press
• 2001 John Aloysius Farrell, Tip O’Neill and the American Century, Little, Brown and Company
• 2002 Robert Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate, Random House
• 2003 Don Oberdorfer, Senator Mansfield: The Extraordinary Life of a Great American Statesman and Diplomat, Smithsonian Books
• 2004 Michael J. Ybarra, Washington Gone Crazy, Steerforth Press
• 2005 David M. Barrett, The CIA and Congress: The Untold Story from Truman to Knnedy, University Press of Kansas
• 2006 Robert David Johnson, Congress and the Cold War, Cambridge University Press
• 2007 William G. Howell and Jon C. Pevehouse, While Dangers Gather: Congressional Checks on Presidential War Powers, Princeton University Press
• 2008 Keith Finley, Delaying the Dream: Southern Senators and the Fight against Civil Rights, 1938-1965, Louisiana State University Press
• 2009 Frances E. Lee, Beyond Ideology: Politics, Principles, and Partisanship in the U.S. Senate, The University of Chicago Press

References