Columbia University has issued its annual Bancroft Prize for works of American history published in 2005, and the high-profile winner this year is Sean Wilentz's The Rise of American Democracy. The Princeton prof's sweeping saga covering U.S. history from the Revolution to the outbreak of the Civil War received major review attention when it was published by Norton last September. The other two Bancroft winners are Erskine Clarke's Dwelling Place: A Plantation Epic, which re-examines the story told in Robert Manson Myers's National Book Award-winning Children of Pride, and Odd Arne Westad's The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times. (The name's Norwegian, so stop your snickering.)