2006 Literary Achievement Award

For Robert Utley

The Mountains & Plains Booksellers Association honor outstanding books which are set in the mountains and plains region of Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Utah, Idaho, Texas, Montana, Kansas, Arizona, Nebraska and South Dakota.

The “Spirit of the West” Literary Achievement Award is given to an author whose body of work captures the unique spirit of the Mountains & Plains region. This year’s winner is Robert M. Utley, one of the founders of The Western History Association, board member of the Friends of the Little Bighorn Battlefield, and recipient of numerous awards including the Wrangler Award of the National Cowboy and Western History Museum, the Western Writers of America's Spur Award, and the Owen Wister Award for distinguished lifetime achievement. 

Mr. Utley has served as a historian with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Regional Historian of the Southwest, Chief Historian in Washington, D.C., Director of Archeology and Historic Preservation, Assistant Director of the National Park Service for Park Historic Preservation, and was Deputy Director of the President’s Advisory Council on Historic Preservation.  Mr. Utley is the author of Custer and Me: A Historians Memoir, The Story of the West, The Lance and the Shield, and After Lewis and Clark: Mountain Men and the Paths to the Pacific among many other works.

Mr. Utley will receive the award February 24, 2006 in Denver, Colorado.

Association Book Awards:

The Arts: Bob Blair, William Henry Jackson's "The Pioneer Photographer."

Children's: Thelma Hatch Wyss, "Bear Dancer."

Fiction: Karen Fisher, "A Sudden Country."

Non-Fiction: Jennet Conant, "109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos

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