Patterson is the latest in a line of Brown's Bancroft recipients

His `Grand Expectations' wins as year's best book about American history

Last week during a black-tie affair in New York City, James T. Patterson was presented the1997 Bancroft Prize in American history for his book "Grand Expectations: the United States, 1945-1974."

"This is absolutely the highlight of my academic career," said Patterson, the Ford Professor of American History and a 25-year member of the Brown faculty. "This is the highest honor I've won and probably the highest honor I could hope for. I am very grateful to my family, colleagues, Oxford Press and Columbia University for presenting me with the award."

Established at Columbia University in 1948, the Bancroft is one of the most prestigious honors a book of history can receive. It is considered by many on par with the Pulitzer Prize, and in some circles is considered more acclaimed because it is judged by an anonymous jury of peers. Past winners of the award include some of the nation's best-known historians, including George F. Brennan and Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

The history department now boasts three Bancroft winners: Patterson; John Thomas, a 1964 winner for "The Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison, A Biography;" and Gordon Wood, a 1970 winner for "The Creation of the American Republic (1776-1787)." "This is quite unusual and possibly unprecedented," said Patterson, whose book is part of the renowned Oxford University Press History of the United States.

Brown has a fourth Bancroft winner - Richard Smoke, an international security researcher who died two years ago while on leave from the Watson Institute for International Studies. Smoke received the award in 1975 for his book "Deterrence in American Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice."

"Grand Expectations "is an 829-page book the Atlantic Monthly called "a magisterial history." It is the interpretative history of the explosive growth, unusual optimism and extraordinary expectations for betterment that lifted the American spirit after World War II and continued into the 1960s. With lively sketches of individuals who led events, it describes the heightened aspirations of politicians and human rights-conscious groups. It also considers the social, economic and cultural trends and foreign policy issues of the period, which became increasingly less optimistic and polarized following assassinations, the Vietnam War and Watergate.

Drawing on his days as a reporter at the Hartford Courant, Patterson researched and wrote the book at an astounding pace. He began work on it in 1991 and delivered a 1,100-page manuscript to the publisher in the spring of 1995. He completed the book while teaching a full course load. "I don't recall ever having any serious writer's block," Patterson said in the November issue of the Brown Alumni Monthly. "Most scholars are trained to look in archives and gather historical information. How to write it all up is not as important. At the Courant the premium was on brevity, clarity, and making the material interesting. I trained myself to think of an audience out there and to try to appeal to it."

Patterson hopes to do the same when he turns his attention to a book that begins in the 1970s and proceeds almost to the end of the century.