UW History Professor Earns Wiley-Silver Prize for the Best First Book in Civil War History

Cecily Zander, an assistant professor of history at the University of Wyoming, has earned the 2025 Center for Civil War Research’s Wiley-Silver Prize for the best first book in Civil War history.

This prize honors new and emerging scholars in the field of American Civil War history. Scholars who earn this award receive $2,000 and an invitation to speak at the University of Mississippi.  

“This award is a tremendous honor, and we here in the Department of History could not be more proud of Dr. Zander,” says Jeff Means, chair and associate professor in the UW Department of History. “We are so glad that she has joined our family here at UW. We know she will continue to achieve tremendous success as both a teacher and a scholar.”

Zander’s book, “The Army Under Fire: The Politics of Antimilitarism in the Civil War Era” (Louisiana State University Press), is a pathbreaking study that examines the intense political debates over the size and use of military forces in the U.S. during the Civil War era.

 

It explores how prominent political figures interacted with the professional army and how those same leaders misunderstood the value of regular soldiers fighting to reunify the fractured nation.

The Center for Civil War Research established the Wiley-Silver Prize in Civil War History in 2011. The center presents the prize to the best first book, thereby recognizing and encouraging new and emerging scholars in the history of the American Civil War. The prize is named for two distinguished former faculty members, Bell Irvin Wiley and James W. Silver.

In addition to serving as an assistant professor of history at UW, Zander also serves as a senior fellow at the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University. 

Her next book, a history of Abraham Lincoln and the American West, will be published by Liveright. She also is working on a short history of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868.

In addition to teaching and writing, she edits the History in an Afternoon series at Louisiana State University Press.  

To learn more about her book, go here.

For more information about Zander’s work, email her at czander@uwyo.edu.