Congratulations are in order for Pekka Hamalainen, author of Comanche Empire and winner of the 2009 Bancroft Prize. One of the most prestigious honors in the field of history, the Bancroft Prize is awarded annually by the trustees of Columbia University to the authors of exceptional works in the fields of American history, biography and diplomacy.

Hamalainen’s book, which shared the honor with a study of the 1914 massacre of striking coal miners in Colorado and an analysis of the impact of death and dying in the Civil War, challenges the idea of indigenous peoples as victims of European expansion and posits that the Comanche tribe had built up a truly imperial force in the Southwest borderlands. Hamalainen is associate professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara. This is his first book.

During the past five years, the Yale University Press has won two other Bancroft Prizes for The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670–1717 and Jonathan Edwards: A Life. Comanche Empire is now available in paperback.