The winner of the 2019 Stubbendieck Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize is author Pekka Hämäläinen for “Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power” (Yale University Press). The Center for Great Plains Studies’ book prize celebrates the most outstanding work about the Great Plains during the past year.

“Lakota America” is an account of the Lakota Indians from the early 16th to the early 21st centuries, including the history of iconic figures Red Cloud, Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull. Hämäläinen is Rhodes Professor of American History at St. Catherine’s College at the University of Oxford. He specializes in indigenous, colonial, imperial, environmental and borderlands history in North America. Before joining Oxford, he taught at Texas A&M University and the University of California, Santa Barbara. His 2008 book, “The Comanche Empire,” received 12 book awards, including the 2008 Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize and the Bancroft Prize.

Along with a $10,000 cash prize, winners are invited to the University of Nebraska–Lincoln to present a lecture on the book’s topic. First-edition, full-length, nonfiction books copyrighted in 2019 were eligible for the award. Nominations were made by publishers or authors.

Learn more about the award and the Center for Great Plains Studies.