Forkosch Awards

Best Humanist Book and Article Awards

The Morris D. Forkosch Endowment Fund was established in 1987 by Morris D. Forkosch and the Council for Secular Humanism to help further the cause of humanism by honoring individuals who make the greatest contributions to its advancement. This endowment finances the Morris D. Forkosch Book Award for the year’s best book on humanism (carrying a $1,000 prize) and the Selma V. Forkosch Award for the year’s best article published in Free Inquiry (carrying a $250 prize).

The Council for Secular Humanism bestows these two awards on a recurring (but not always regular) basis. All winners are listed in the table below.

The Morris D. Forkosch Endowment Fund committee continually solicits nominations for these awards.

To nominate a book, please send a copy of it to:
Morris D. Forkosch Endowment Fund Committee,
Free Inquiry, P. O. Box 664,
Amherst, NY 14226-0664.

Alternatively, you may email a book’s author, title, publisher, and year of publication—or an article’s title and author to [email protected]

	Morris D. Forkosch Book Award	Selma V. Forkosch Article Award
2020	Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism	Judith Wellman, “What Can Historic Sites Tell Us about the Movement for Women’s Suffrage in New York State?”
2019	Steven Waldman, Sacred Liberty: America’s Long, Bloody, and Ongoing Struggle for Religious Freedom	Brian Bolton, “The United States Is Not a Christian Nation. It Never Has Been, and It Never Will Be”
2018	Catherine Nixey, The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World	Lowrey R. Brown, “By My Own Hand: Suicide Can Be a Wise and Gentle Choice”
2017	Kurt Andersen, Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: a 500-Year History	Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, “Mattering Matters”
2016	Ali A. Rizvi, The Atheist Muslim: A Journey from Religion to Reason	Phil Zuckerman, “Secularism and Social Progress”
2015	Mark A. Smith, Secular Faith: How Culture Has Trumped Religion in American Politics	Leah Mickens, “Theology of the Odd Body: The Castrati, the Church, and the Transgender Moment”
2014	Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away	Andy Norman, “Reason Unhinged: The Religious Subversion of Civil Accountability”
2013	A. C. Grayling, The God Argument: The Case Against Religion and For Humanism	Luke Galen and Jeremy Beahan, “Does Religion Really Make Us Better People?”
2012	Susan Jacoby, The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought	Ryan Cragun, Stephanie Yeager, and Desmond Vega, “How Secular Humanists (and Everyone Else) Subsidize Religion in the United States”
2011	Stephen Law, Humanism: A Very Short Introduction	Gregory Paul, Daniel C. Dennett, Darren Sherkat, and Linda LaScolla, “Stop Dumping on Atheists”
2009	Jerry Coyne, Why Evolution Is True	Alexander Saxton, “The Great God Debate and the Future of Faith”
2008	Susan Jacoby, The Age of American Unreason	Larry Hickman, “Citizen Participation: More or Less”
2007		David Trobisch, “Who Published the Christian Bible?”
2006	Daniel C. Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
2005		Susan Haack, “Mystery-Mongering, Prejudice, and the Search for Truth: Replies to Some Reservations”
2004	Richard Dawkins, The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution
2002	Taner Edis, The Ghost in the Universe: God in Light of Modern Science	Pervez Hoodbhoy, “Muslims and the West After September 11”
1993	Antony Flew, Atheistic Humanism: The Prometheus Lectures	Richard A. Fox, “’The Incredible Discovery of Noah’s Ark’: An Archaeological Quest?”
1990	Steve Allen, Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion, and Morality Sidney Hook, Convictions	Richard Taylor, “The American Judiciary as Secular Priesthood”
1989	Stephen Jay Gould, Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History	Adolf Grünbaum, “The Pseudo-Problem of Creation in Physical Cosmology”
1987	Arthur N. Strahler, Science and Earth History: The Evolution/Creation Controversy	Paul Edwards, “The Case Against Reincarnation” (four-part series)