CSER’s Co-Director Mae Ngai’s Wins Bancroft Prize – considered one of the most prestigious in the field of American history. Her book “The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics,” published by W.W. Norton, was praised by the jury as “an extraordinary book” that “brilliantly shows us how much of the white Anglo-American world came to view the Chinese as a racially unassimilable and threatening people.

The Bancroft, which includes an award of $10,000, was established in 1948 by the trustees of Columbia University, with a bequest from the historian Frederic Bancroft. Books are evaluated for “the scope, significance, depth of research, and richness of interpretation.”