May 2, 1960
Margaret Leech ’15 won her second Pulitzer Prize in History for In the Days of McKinley (1959), a recreation—as was her Reveille in Washington (1941)—of a precisely defined period in national history. “Seldom,” The San Francisco Chronicle said of the book, “has 19th Century America been recaptured and evoked bore successfully or more skillfully…. It is rare indeed to find a work of such solid and permanent historical value which is executed with such literary skill.”
Leech, whose book on McKinley also won the prestigious Bancroft Prize, was the widow of Ralph Pulitzer, the son of the founder of the Pulitzer Prizes.