For Immediate Release
Contact: Kate Kolendo
212-255-0200 ext. 226
kkolendo@publishers.org
Association of American Publishers Announces 2008 PROSE Award Winners
February 5, 2009, Washington, DC – The Professional and Scholarly Publishing (PSP) Division of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) is pleased to announce the winners of the 2008 American Publishers Awards for Professional and Scholarly Excellence (The PROSE Awards).
More than 35 PROSE Awards, including the top prize, the R.R. Hawkins Award, will be presented today, February 5, 2009, at a special Awards Luncheon during the PSP Annual Conference, held February 4-6, at the Renaissance Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. This year’s winners were determined by a distinguished panel of 15 PROSE judges that included publishing professionals from such PSP member companies as McGraw-Hill, Wiley-Blackwell, and The Johns Hopkins University Press, and librarians and academics from universities such as the University of Arizona, the University of Toronto, New York University and Columbia University.
The recipient of the 2008 R.R. Hawkins Award is Harvard University Press for The Race Between Education & Technology by Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz. The prestigious R.R. Hawkins Award recognizes exceptional scholarly works in all disciplines of the arts and sciences, and is given for the most outstanding professional, reference, or scholarly work among the year’s award winners. The Award will be presented at the Awards Luncheon on February 5, by Priscilla Hawkins Burns, daughter of Reginald Robert Hawkins, the former head of the Science and Technology Division of the New York Public Library.
Presented since 1976, and now newly renamed and rebranded, the 2008 PROSE Awards received a record-breaking 439 entries – over 100 more than in 2007 and more than ever before in its 33-year history – from 60 professional and scholarly publishers across the country. Other firsts for this year’s Awards include the eligibility for submission of Association of American University Press (AAUP) members who may not be members of AAP/PSP, an increased online presence via a new Awards website, www.proseawards.com, and a dynamic Awards Luncheon program with multimedia components. “The Mind of the Judge,” a video that gives a glimpse into the backgrounds of the PROSE Awards judges will debut at the Awards Luncheon.
About The Race Between Education and Technology
A survey of American education from a unique economic lens, The Race Between Education and Technology is a superb piece of economic and historical scholarship, rendered in accessible prose.
Employing the economist’s usual statistical tools, Goldin and Katz trace the role of education in creating America’s pre-eminent place in the world, starting in the 19th century, and, with data in hand, examine how growing educational attainment led to both a growing of individual income and a narrowing of income distribution between the top and bottom income earners in the 20th century. Goldin and Katz note that the stalling of our educational system in the 1980s resulted in a regression which many economists regard as one of America’s top problems: A shrinking portion of the population is taking a rapidly increasing share of the available income, while most Americans and their children face even less potential economic success than their parents did.
A book of observation and opinion that is backed up by extensive statistical analysis of data, The Race Between Education and Technology is a call to action: to re-assert our historic education features and give greater educational access to those at the middle and bottom of our economic system.
The Association of American Publishers is the national trade association of the U.S. book publishing industry. AAP’smore than300 members include most of the major commercial publishers in the United States, as well as smaller and non-profit publishers, university presses and scholarly societies – small and large. AAP members publish hardcover and paperback books in every field, educational materials for the elementary, secondary, postsecondary, and professional markets, scholarly journals, computer software, and electronic products and services. The protection of intellectual property rights in all media, the defense of the freedom to read and the freedom to publish at home and abroad, and the promotion of reading and literacy are among the Association’s highest priorities.
Click here for complete list of all 2008 PROSE winners.