Great news — UGA historian Bethany Moreton has won the Frederick Jackson Turner Award for her HUP book To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise (reviews: Bookforum, NYTBR, The Big Money). The award is given each year by the Organization of American Historians for the best first book on a significant phase of American history. In investigating the complex network that gave rise to the giant we know as Wal-Mart — on that united Sun Belt entrepreneurs, evangelical
employees, Christian business students, overseas missionaries, and
free-market activists — Moreton’s book uncovers the roots of the "Christian service" ethos that has increasingly powered capitalism at home and abroad. Moreton will accept the award at the 2010 OAH meeting in Washington DC on April 10.
||| Read Bethany Moreton’s essay "Culture War on Aisle 5? Wal-Mart, Evangelicals, and ‘Extreme Capitalism’" at Powells.com.
