Book on Jefferson & Islam gets Hamilton Award

University of Texas at Austin History Professor Denise A. Spellberg has been named the $10,000 grand prize winner of the 2014 University Co-op Robert W. Hamilton Book Awards for her work “Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an: Islam and the Founders.”

The Hamilton Awards are among the highest honors of literary achievement given for UT Austin authors.

In “Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an: Islam and the Founders” (published by Alfred A. Knopf), Spellberg recounts how a handful of the country’s founders, Jefferson foremost among them, drew upon Enlightenment ideas about the tolerance of Muslims to fashion a practical foundation for governance in America.

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