NEW YORK (AP) — One the country’s greatest Civil War historians has won a lifetime achievement award.

James M. McPherson is best known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Battle Cry of Freedom.” He received the seventh annual Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Award for distinguished writing in American history. The award is named for the late Pulitzer-winning historian and was announced Monday by the Society of American Historians.

Philip Shenon won the Francis Parkman Prize for last year’s best book for “A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination.”

The Allan Nevins Prize for best doctoral dissertation went to Nora Doyle for “Bodies at Odds,” about women in early American history. Doyle is a recent graduate of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

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