Zone Books is pleased to announce that Peter Sahlins’s 1668: The Year of the Animal in France has been awarded the 2018 J. Russell Major Prize for French History. Click here to learn more about Sahlins’s book. A description of the prize appears below:

“Washington, DC— Peter Sahlins, Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley, has been selected as the winner of the 2018 J. Russell Major Prize for the book 1668: The Year of the Animal in France (Zone Books, 2017). The Major Prize is awarded annually by the American Historical Association (AHA) to honor the best book in French history. The prize will be awarded during a ceremony at the Association’s 133rd Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL, January 3-6, 2019.

Sahlins’s book was selected by a prize review committee of AHA members including Tessie P. Liu (Northwestern Univ.), chair; Cecilia Gaposchkin (Dartmouth Coll.); and Gary M. Wilder (Graduate Center, CUNY).

The Major prize was established in memory of J. Russell Major, a distinguished scholar of French history who served on the history faculty at Emory University from 1949 until his retirement in 1990.

The American Historical Association is a nonprofit membership organization founded in 1884 and incorporated by Congress in 1889 for the promotion of historical studies. The AHA provides leadership for the discipline, protects academic freedom, develops professional standards, aids in the pursuit and publication of scholarship, and supplies various services to sustain and enhance the work of its members. As the largest organization of historians in the United States, the AHA is comprised of over 12,000 members and serves historians representing every historical period and geographical area.”