Activities of the Friends

MEETINGS

Bancroft Awards Dinner

On Wednesday, April 24, approximately 340 members of our
organization and their guests met for the culminating event of
the academic year—the Bancroft Awards Dinner which was held
in the Rotunda of Low .Memorial Library. Mr. Hugh J. Kelly,
Chairman of our association, presided.

During the program, President Grayson Kirk announced the
winners of the prizes for the three books judged by the Bancroft
Prize Jury to be the best published in 1962 in the fields of Amer¬
ican History, American Diplomacy, and International Relations
of the United States: John Adams, by Page Smith, The Might of
Nations: World Politics in Our Time, by John G. Stoessinger,
and Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision, by Roberta Wohl-
stetter. He presented a $4,000 check to each of the authors who
responded with short addresses. Mr. Kelly presented certificates
to Mr. LeBaron Barker of Doubleday and Company, Incorpo¬
rated, to Mr. Bennett Cerf of Random House, and to Mr. Leon
E. Seltzer of the Stanford University Press, the publishers, re¬
spectively, of the three award-winning books. The principal
speaker for the occasion was Dr. Henry S. Commager, Professor
of History at Amherst College whose topic was "The Moral of
the Collapse of the Confederacy."

The Bancroft Awards Dinner Committee was made up of
Mrs. Francis Henry Lenygon, Chairman, and Mrs. Arthur C.
Holden.

The prizes, which are provided by funds from the Bancroft
Foundation, are among the richest available to historians. The
Friends take pleasure in helping to enlarge public knowledge of
these awards.
 

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