His book Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for History.
[10] Following his first publication, McDaniel sat as a board member for Historians Against Slavery[11] and received the 2017 George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching.
[13] McDaniel's second book, Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America, was published in 2019 and was a historical account of the life of Henrietta Wood.
Wood was captured and enslaved twice before winning the largest known financial settlement awarded by a U.S. court in restitution for slavery.
[15] It received the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for History, making him the first Rice professor to win a Pulitzer,[16] and the Avery O. Craven Award for "the most original book on the coming of the Civil War, the Civil War years, or the Era of Reconstruction, with the exception of works of purely military history.