Professor’s Work In Running For Bombastic Prize

Professor Richard Overy’s work “The Bombing War: Europe, 1939-1945” has been placed in the running for a new award: The Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize in Military History. He will be competing against five other authors to win the £30,000 prize.

Professor Overy

Overy’s work is a complete history of the Blitz and the use of bombs in the Second World War. It focuses on the use of massive bomber fleets to strike fear into civilians hearts. This challenges the idea that the Allies prided themselves on fighting a ‘moral’ war, exploring bombing on many other fronts – not just the most infamous campaigns.

Bomber fleets

The award will be given each year for the best book published about military history in the previous year, and is supported by the Harry Frank Guggeinheim Foundation, which supports research on various fields, such as violence, aggression and dominance.

The prize’s aim is to draw attention to military history, and to increase awareness of how it corresponds to many areas of academia, such as IR and diplomacy.

Professor Overy’s fate will be announced on the 17th March at the New-York Historical Society in New York City.