BOOK PRIZE

Roberts Foundation Book Award
Awarded Annually by the Fort Sumter Civil War Round Table

The Roberts Foundaion is honored to support the Fort Sumter Civil War Round Table and its annual book award.

In 2022, the Roberts Foundation (https://roberts.foundation) endowed this book prize that is awarded annually by the Fort Sumter Civil War Round Table. The prize awards $1,000 for the best book written on the Civil War in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. To be considered, a book must be nominated or submitted to a selection committee of round table members by October 1 of the year in consideration. The recipient and two other finalists are named by November 3. Recipients of the prize then receive the award and a plaque at a banquet the following May.

The Roberts Foundation was founded by William C. Robdrts, MD, in December 2018, with a mission to inspire scholarship and achievement in the fields of Health and American Heritage. From 1964 to 1993, Dr. Roberts was Chief of Pathology in the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Md. He has published more than 1,700 articles, authored or edited 31 books, and lectured in more than 2,200 cities around the world. Since 1993, he has been the executive director of the Baylor Heart and Vascular Institute at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, Tex. Dr. Roberts has also been the editor-in-chief of The American Journal of Cardiology since June 1982.

Richard W. Hatcher III Wins 2024 Roberts Foundation Book Award!

Richard W. Hatcher III has won the 2024 Roberts Foundation Book Award for Thunder in the Harbor: Fort Sumter and the Civil War (2023). Described as "detailed, authorative, and expansive," the book is also credited with being the first modern study to document Fort Sumter from its origins, through the war, and up to its transfer to the National Park Service in 1948.

A native of Richmond, Va., Hatcher received his B.A. in History in 1973 from Virginia Commonwealth University. His lifelong love of the subject began during the Civil War Centennial and grew when he later worked as a seasonal employee at Richmond National Battlefield Park. He then began working permanently with the National Park Service in 1976, and retired in 2015 as Historian from Fort Sumter Fort Moultrie National Historical Park.

Hatcher is the author or coauthor of numerous articles articles and books, including the award-winning Wilson's Creek, The Second Major Battle of the Civil War and the Men Who Fought It (2001), and The First Shot (2011). He is a regular on the Civil War speaking circuit.

Michael Laramie
2023 Award Winner

Michael G. Laramie won the 2023 Roberts Foundation Book Award for Gunboats, Muskets, and Torpedoes: Coastal South Carolina, 1861-1865. Laramie is a military history writer and the author of eight books, including: The Road to Ticonderoga: The Campaign of 1758 in the Champlain Valley; Gunboats, Muskets, and Torpedoes; and King George's War and the Thirty-Year Peace. Laramie has also published articles in a number of magazines and journals, inclluding Vermont History, Military History Magazine, Military History Matters, and The Journal of America's Military Past.

Anna Koivusalo
2022 Award Winner

Anna Koivusalo won the 2022 Roberts Foundation Book Award -- the Foundation's first -- for The Man Who Started the Civil War: James Chestnut, Honor, and Emotion in the American South. Much more than a biography of James Chestnut, the book provided a new way of looking at honor in the South. It is an important book that will influence the study of Southern culture and honor for many years to come.