Some 40 category winners and 105 finalists are named the 2023 edition of the American Association of Publishers’ annual PROSE Awards.

By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson

Bokelman: ‘Exceptional Titles’

As Publishing Perspectives readers who follow international publishing’s myriad prizes and book awards know that the annual PROSE Awards from the Association of American Publishers (AAP) produce one of the world’s heaviest loads of categorized winners.

These honors for “professional and scholarly excellence”—the source of the acronym PROSE—are now in their 47th iteration.

Today (February 8), we have a pool of some 43 category winners. Associated finalists are available at the program’s site here.

These category winners then become eligible to be named to the top awards:

• The 2023 PROSE Award for Excellence in Biological and Life Sciences
• The 2023 PROSE Award for Excellence in Humanities
• The 2023 PROSE Award for Excellence in Physical Sciences and Mathematics
• The 2023 PROSE Award for Excellence in Social Sciences

And then one of those four titles is chosen to be given the chief prize, the RR Hawkins Award.

In a prepared statement, Emily Bokelman,  the manager of AAP’s member programs, is quoted, saying, “The 2023 PROSE Award entries considered by our judges illustrate the wide breadth of excellence, diversity, and merit in scholarly works published today, in [many] areas of academic study.

“Our 25-juror panel evaluated this year’s entries to select 105 titles as finalists, further naming 40 exceptional titles to be honored as category winners.”

Nigel Fletcher-Jones, chief juror of the PROSE Awards, says, “This year’s entries continued the trend of raising the bar for finalists and category winners, leading to hard decisions for judges in choosing this year’s Awards for Excellence nominees and RR Hawkins Award winner, which will be announced shortly.”

AAP PROSE Awards, 2023 Category Winners

The 105–count ’em–category finalists can be found on the Association of American Publishers’ PROSE Award pages.

Biological and Life Sciences

• Biological Sciences: The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human, Siddhartha Mukherjee, Scribner
• Biomedicine and Neuroscience: Cellular Senescence in Disease, Manuel Serrano, Daniel Munoz-Espin, Elsevier
• Clinical Medicine: The Infertility Trap: Why Life Choices Impact your Fertility and Why We Must Act Now, R. John Aitken, Cambridge University Press
• Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry: The Neurocognitive Theory of Dreaming: The Where, How, When, What, and Why of Dreams, G. William Domhoff, The MIT Press
• Nursing and Allied Health: Transcultural Artificial Intelligence and Robotics in Health and Social Care, Irena Papadopoulos, Christina Koulouglioti, Chris Papadopoulous, Antonio Sgorbissa, Elsevier

Humanities

• Art Exhibitions: Persia: Ancient Iran and the Classical World, Edited by Jeffrey Spier, Timothy Potts, and Sara E. Cole, Getty Publications
• Art History and Criticism: The Villa Farnesina: Palace of Venus in Renaissance Rome, James Grantham Turner, Cambridge University Press
• Biography and Autobiography: But I Live: Three Stories of Child Survivors of the Holocaust, Miriam Libicki and David Schaffer; Gilad Seliktar and Nico and Rolf Kamp; Barbara Yelin and Emmie Arbel; Charlotte Schallié (ed.), New Jewish Press
• Biological Anthropology, Archaeology, and Ancient History: The Five-Million-Year Odyssey: The Human Journey from Ape to Agriculture, Peter Bellwood, Princeton University Press
• Classics: Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity, Sarah F. Derbew, Cambridge University Press
• European History: Who’s Black and Why? A Hidden Chapter from the Eighteenth-Century Invention of Race, Edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. & Andrew S. Curran, Harvard University Press
• Language and Linguistics: Language vs. Reality: Why Language Is Good for Lawyers and Bad for Scientists, N. J. Enfield, The MIT Press
• Literature: Lorca After Life, Noël Valis, Yale University Press
• Media and Cultural Studies: No winner awarded
• Music and Performing Arts: Black Ephemera: The Crisis and Challenge of the Musical Archive, Mark Anthony Neal, New York University Press
• Nonfiction Graphic Novels: But I Live: Three Stories of Child Survivors of the Holocaust, Miriam Libicki and David Schaffer; Gilad Seliktar and Nico and Rolf Kamp; Barbara Yelin and Emmie Arbel; Charlotte Schallié (ed.), New Jewish Press
• North American and US History: Necropolis: Disease, Power, and Capitalism in the Cotton Kingdom, Kathryn Olivarius, Harvard University Press
• Outstanding Work by a Trade Publisher: Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology, Chris Miller, Scribner
• Philosophy: When Animals Dream: The Hidden World of Animal Consciousness, David M. Peña-Guzmán, Princeton University Press
• Theology and Religious Studies: Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination: Altered States of Knowledge in Late Antiquity, Wouter J. Hanegraaff, Cambridge University Press
• World History: The New Atlantic Order: The Transformation of International Politics, 1860–1933, Patrick O. Cohrs, Cambridge University Press

Physical Sciences and Mathematics

• Chemistry, Physics, Astronomy, and Cosmology: Cosmology, Daniel Baumann, Cambridge University Press
• Computing and Information Sciences: Human-Centered AI, Ben Shneiderman, Oxford University Press
• Earth Science: Remnants of Ancient Life: The New Science of Old Fossils, Dale Greenwalt, Princeton University Press
• Engineering and Technology: The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World, Julio Mario Ottino, The MIT Press
• Environmental Science: The World Atlas of Trees and Forests: Exploring Earth’s Forest Ecosystems, Herman Shugart, Peter White, Sassan Saatchi, and Jérôme Chave, Princeton University Press
• History of Science, Medicine, and Technology: Rules: A Short History of What We Live By, Lorraine Daston, Princeton University Press
• Mathematics and Statistics: Elements of Infinity-Category Theory, Emily Riehl, Dominic Verity, Cambridge University Press
• Popular Science and Mathematics: Quantum Steampunk: The Physics of Yesterday’s Tomorrow, Nicole Yunger Halpern, John’s Hopkins University Press

Social Sciences

• Architecture and Urban Planning: Co-Cities: Innovative Transitions toward Just and Self-Sustaining Communities, Sheila R. Foster and Christian Iaione, THE MIT Press
• Business, Finance, and Management: Spiderweb Capitalism: How Global Elites Exploit Frontier Markets, Kimberly Kay Hoang, Princeton University Press
• Cultural Anthropology and Sociology: Reclaiming Two-Spirits: Sexuality, Spiritual Renewal & Sovereignty in Native America, Gregory D. Smithers, Beacon Press
• Economics: Adam Smith’s America: How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of American Capitalism, Glory M. Liu, Princeton University Press
• Education Theory and Practice: Doing the Right Thing: How Colleges and Universities Can Undo Systemic Racism in Faculty Hiring, Marybeth Gasman, Princeton University Press
• Government and Politics: Stars and Shadows: The Politics of Interracial Friendship from Jefferson to Obama, Saladin Ambar, Oxford University Press
• Legal Studies and Criminology: Critical Race Judgments: Rewritten U.S. Court Opinions on Race and the Law, Edited by Bennett Capers, Devon W. Carbado, R. A. Lenhardt, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Cambridge University Press
• Psychology and Applied Social Work: What Babies Know: Core Knowledge and Composition, Elizabeth S. Spelke, Oxford University Press

Product Format

• E-products: Shadow Plays: Virtual Realities in an Analog World, Massimo Riva, Stanford University Press
• Journals: No winner or finalists awarded

Reference Works

• Reference Works – Biological and Life Sciences: No winner awarded
• Reference Works – Humanities: A Cultural History of Ideas, Sophia Rosenfeld, Peter T. Struck, Bloomsbury
• Reference Works – Physical Sciences and Mathematics: No winner awarded
• Reference Works – Social Sciences: Measuring Sustainable Development Goals Performance, Sten Thore, Ruzanna Tarverdyan, Elsevier

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