Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Hackett Fischer won the 2015 Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing. Sponsored by the Tawani Foundation, the $100,000 award will be presented at the Museum & Library's annual gala on November 7.
"Dr. Fischer has made extraordinary contributions to the field of military history," said award screening committee chairman John W. Rowe, who added that the recipient is "a master story teller and a brilliant teacher. The committee members take great pride in recommending a deserving candidate for selection each year, and Dr. Fischer is an undeniably worthy choice."
Fischer's books include Washington's Crossing, Paul Revere's Ride, Champlain's Dream and Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America.
"The Pritzker Literature Award is deeply meaningful to me--it comes as the judgment of colleagues who have set the highest standards in my field by the excellence of their research and writing," said Fischer. "It inspires a sense of obligation in work to come."
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Henry Marsh won the £3,000 (about $4,730) PEN/Ackerley Prize, English PEN's award dedicated to memoir and autobiography, for Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery (Thomas Dunne), a candid reflection on his career as a leading neurosurgeon, describing how surgeons work, the lives they save and the mistakes they make.
Chair of judges Peter Parker said that Do No Harm demonstrated "all the qualities that can be found in J.R. Ackerley's own books: beautifully written, recklessly honest and morally complex.... Marsh writes superbly about the intricacies of the human body, about the sometimes conflicting impulses of professional ambition and human need, and about the difficulty of talking honestly to patients and their families in times of medical crisis. These 'Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery' present a compelling argument about the moral dimension of surgical intervention and build to a touching and rueful self-portrait."
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The Canadian Council for the Arts announced that two-time Scotiabank Giller Prize–winning author M.G. Vassanji has been awarded the $50,000 (about $40,340) Molson Prize, which "recognizes two distinguished members of the arts and social-science communities in Canada for long-term contributions to their field," Quillblog reported. Legal scholar Constance Backhouse was the second honoree.
