Press Releases

JACKSON HOLE, WY -- Lynne Cheney’s James Madison Book Award selection committee is now accepting book recommendations for the 2005 award. The annual award is presented to the book that, in Mrs. Cheney’s words, “best represents excellence in bringing knowledge and understanding of American history to the next generation.” The third annual award, a cash prize of $10,000, will be announced at an award ceremony in early July 2005.

Beginning with the current award cycle, only nonfiction books are eligible. Books must be published in 2004 and written for children in elementary and middle school. The deadline for recommending a book is May 1, 2005. Book publishers and members of the James Madison Book Award Advisory Council are eligible to recommend candidates for the award. Additional information is available at www.jamesmadisonbookaward.org.

“We look forward to receiving many outstanding entries that teach American history to children and young people,” Mrs. Cheney said. “I hope that the James Madison Book Award will continue to encourage the very best authors to take up history, and publishers to seek out writers who can make America’s story come alive.”

In July, the James Madison Book Award selection committee will name the winner as well as “Honor Books,” exceptional entries recognized with a silver James Madison Book Award seal. Mrs. Cheney presented the 2004 James Madison Book Award to author Jim Murphy for An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 (Clarion Books, 2003) at the Mother Bethel AME Church in Philadelphia.

The award winner is chosen each year by a committee drawn from the James Madison Book Award Advisory Council. The Council, chaired by Mrs. Cheney, is composed of more than thirty members, including television producer Ken Burns, historians David McCullough and Michael Beschloss, Children’s Television Workshop founder Joan Ganz Cooney, commentator Peggy Noonan, journalist Hugh Sidey, and educator E. D. Hirsch.

To underwrite the annual award, Mrs. Cheney donated $100,000 to form the James Madison Book Award Fund, a separate fund of the Community Foundation of Jackson Hole, a Wyoming 501(c)(3) public foundation. Her donation represents a portion of the profits from her own children’s books, America: A Patriotic Primer and A is for Abigail: An Almanac of Amazing American Women. All of the net proceeds from Mrs. Cheney’s children’s books go to charity.

Lynne Cheney served as chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1986 to 1993 and is currently a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D. C. She is author or co-author of eight books, including America: A Patriotic Primer, A is for Abigail: An Almanac of Amazing American Women, and When Washington Crossed the Delaware, three children’s books celebrating America’s history. She is married to Vice President Dick Cheney.