AAG Meridian Book Award
Awarded to a book that makes an unusually important contribution to advancing the science and art of geography. For more information about the Association of American Geographers, sponsor of this award, click here.
2025 Judicial Territory: Law, Capital, and the Expansion of American Empire by Shaina Potts ; Apartheid Remains by Sharad Chari (honorable mention)
2024 Displacing Territory: Syrian and Palestinian Refugees in Jordan by Karen Culcasi
2023 Urban Ecologies on the Edge: Making Manila’s Resource Frontier by Kristian Karlo Saguin; Encounters in the New World: Jesuit Cartography of the Americas by Mirela Altic (honorable mention); Staple Security: Bread and Wheat in Egypt by Jessica Barnes (honorable mention)
2022 Dear science and other stories by Katherine McKittrick; Palm oil diaspora : Afro-Brazilian landscapes and economies on Bahia’s Dendê Coast by Case Watkins (honorable mention); The radical bookstore : counterspace for social movements by Kimberley Kinder (honorable mention)
2021 Whale snow : Iñupiat, climate change, and multispecies resilience in arctic Alaska by Chie Sakakibara
2020 Wilted : pathogens, chemicals, and the fragile future of the strawberry industry by Julie Guthman
2019 The source : how rivers made America and America remade its rivers by Martin Doyle
2018 Rare earth frontiers : from terrestrial subsoils to lunar landscapes by Julie Michelle Klinger
2017 Limits to globalization : the disruptuive geographies of capitalist development by Eric Sheppard
2016 Concrete revolution : large dams, Cold War geopolitics, and the US Bureau of Reclamation by Christopher Sneddon
2015 The fabric of space : water, modernity and the urban imagination by Matthew Gandy
2014 The birth of territory by Stuart Elden
2013 Africa after apartheid : South Africa, race and nation in Tanzania by Richard Schroeder
2012 Code/space : software and everyday life by Martin Dodge and Rob Kitchin
2011 Seeking asylum : human smuggling and bureaucracy at the border by Alison Mountz
2010 War, violence, and population : making the body count by James A. Tyner
2009 Environmental change and globalization : double exposures by Robin Leichenko and Karen O'Brien
2008 Resurrecting the granary of Rome : environmental history and French colonial expansion in North Africa by Diana K. Davis
2007 Black, brown, yellow, and left : radical activism in Los Angeles by Laura Pulido
2006 On Hollywood : the place, the industry by Allen J. Scott
2005 Growing up global : economic restructuring and children's everyday lives by Cindi Katz
2004 Deforesting the earth : from prehistory to global crisis by Michael Williams (abridged edition (2006) here)
2003 The Internet on earth : a geography of information by Aharon Kellerman
2002 Land, power, and economics on the frontier of Upper Canada by John Clarke
2001 California and the fictions of capital by George L. Henderson
Globe Book Award
This prize is awarded to those books that document the ways the nominated work conveys the nature and importance of geography to the non-academic world. For more information about the Association of American Geographers, sponsor of this award, click here.
2025 Florida Springs: From Geography to Politics and Restoration by Christopher F. Meindl
2024 Earth, Ice, Bone, Blood by Charlotte Wrigley
2023 Postcards from the Baja California Border portraying townscape and place, 1900s-1950s by Daniel D. Arreola
2022 Atlas of the invisible by James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti|
2021 The death of asylum : hidden geographies of the enforcement archipelago by Alison Mountz
2020 Empire's labor : the global army that supports U.S. wars by Adam Moore
2019 Unjust conditions : women's work and the hidden cost of cash transfer programs by Tara Patricia Cookson
2018 Development drowned and reborn : the Blues and Bourbon restorations in post-Katrina New Orleans by Clyde Woods, edited by Jordan Camp and Laura Pulido
2017 A curriculum of fear : homeland security in U.S. public schools by Nicole Nguyen
2016 Historical Atlas of Maine, edited by Stephen J. Hornsby and Richard W. Judd ; Michael J. Hermann
2015 Atlas of cities by Paul Knox
2014 Why walls won't work : repairing the US-Mexico divide by Michael Dear
2013 A people's guide to Los Angeles by Laura Pulido, Laura Barraclough and Wendy Cheng
2012 Exploring the Brazos River from beginning to end by Jim Kimmel and Jerry Touchstone Kimmel (photographs)
2011 Archaeology and landscape in the Mongolian Altai : an atlas by Esther Jacobson-Tepfer and James E. Meacham ; Gary Tepfer, Photography
2010 Terror and territory : the spatial extent of sovereignty by Stuart Elden
2009 Civil rights memorials and the geography of memory by Owen J. Dwyer and Derek H. Alderman
2008 Census atlas of the United States : Census 2000 special reports, prepared by Trudy A. Suchan, Marc J. Perry, James D. Fitzsimmons, Anika E. Juhn, Alexander M. Tait and Cynthia A. Brewer
2007 Boundaries of dissent : protest and state power in the media age by Bruce D'Arcus
2006 Ramona memories : tourism and the shaping of Southern California by Dydia DeLyser
2005 Cities on the Plains : the evolution of urban Kansas by John R. Shortridge
2004 American empire : Roosevelt's geographer and the prelude to globalization by Neil Smith
2003 Spying with maps : surveillance technologies and future of privacy by Mark Monmonier
2002 Atlas of Oregon by William G. Loy
2001 Our town on the Plains : J. J. Pennell's photographs of Junction City, Kansas, 1893-1922 by James R. Shortridge
John Brinckerhoff Jackson Prize
Established to encourage and reward American geographers who write books about the United States which convey the insights of professional geography in language that is interesting and attractive to a lay audience. For more information about the Association of American Geographers, sponsor of this award, click here.
2025 [tie] City of Wood by James Michael Buckley
2025 [tie] Framing Nature: the Creation of an American Icon at the Grand Canyon by Yolonda Youngs
2024 [tie] Border Witness: Re-imagining the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands Through Film by Michael Dear
2024 [tie] Near Woods: A Year in an Allegheny Forest by Kevin Patrick
2023 Loving Orphaned Space: The Art and Science of Belonging to Earth by Mrill Ingram
2022 Profiting from the Peak : landscape and liberty in Colorado Springs by John Harner
2021 The place with no edge : an intimate history of people, technology, and the Mississippi River Delta by Adam Mandelman
2020 The taco truck : how Mexican street food is transforming the American city by Robert Lemon
2019 Bombs away : militarization, conservation and ecological restoration by David Havlick
2018 Picturing America : the golden age of pictorial maps by Stephen Hornsby; Heading out : a history of American camping by Terence Young
2017 The National Mall : no ordinary public space by Lisa Benton-Short
2016 Hispanic and Latino New Orleans : immigration and identity since the eighteenth century by Andrew Sluyter, Case Watkins, James P. Chaney and Annie M. Gibson
2015 America's public lands : from Yellowstone to Smokey Bear and beyond by Randall K. Wilson
2014 Mastering iron : the struggle to modernize an American industry, 1800-1868 by Anne Kelly Knowles
2013 Kansas City and how it grew, 1822-2011 by James "Pete" Shortridge
2012 Miami : mistress of the Americas by Jan Nijman
2011 Field guide to California agriculture by Paul F. Starrs and Peter Goin
2010 Stairway to empire : Lockport, the Erie Canal, and the shaping of America by Patrick McGreevy
2009 The American college town by Blake Gumprecht
2008 The future city on the inland sea : a history of imaginative geographies of Lake Superior by Eric D. Olmanson
2007 Route 66 : iconography of the American highway by Arthur J. Krim
2006 An unnatural metropolis : wresting New Orleans from nature by Craig Colten
2005 The shaping of America : a geographical perspective on 500 years of history, volume 4 : global America, 1915-2000 by Donald W. Meinig
2004 New Orleans : the making of an urban landscape (2d ed.) by Peirce F. Lewis
2003 Tejano South Texas : a Mexican American cultural province by Daniel D. Arreola
2002 City lights : illuminating the American night by John A. Jakle
2001 George Perkins Marsh, prophet of conservation by David B. Lowenthal
2000 The Los Angeles River : its life, death, and possible rebirth by Blake Gumprecht
1999 The cotton plantation South since the Civil War by Charles S. Aiken
1998 Shadowed ground : America's landscapes of violence and tragedy by Kenneth E. Foote
1997 Main Street revisited : time, space, and image building in small town America by Richard Francaviglia
1996 An unspeakable sadness : the dispossession of the Nebraska Indians by David J. Wishart
1995 Living downtown : the history of residential hotels in the United States by Paul Groth
1994 Rocky Mountain divide : selling and saving the West by John B. Wright
1993 The cultural geography of the United States, revised & enlarged edition, by Wilbur Zelinsky
1992 The Land That Feeds Us by John Fraser Hart
1991 Historic Illinois from the Air by David Buisseret
1990 Our Town on the Plains: J.J. Pennell’s Photographs of Junction City, Kansas 1893-1922 by James R. Shortridge
1989 |TIE| We the People: An Atlas of America’s Ethnic Diversity James Paul Allen & Eugene James Turner for
1989 |TIE| Sampete Scenes: A Guide to Utah’s Heart by Gary B. Peterson & Lowell C. Bennion
1988 America’s Northern Heartland by John R. Borchert
1987 Between the Mountains: A Portrait of Eastern Washington by John A. Alwin
1986 Plains Country Towns by John C. Hudson
The PROSE Award
The PROSE Awards annually recognize the very best in professional and scholarly publishing by bringing attention to distinguished books, journals, and electronic content in over 40 categories. Judged by peer publishers, librarians, and medical professionals since 1976, the PROSE Awards are extraordinary for their breadth and depth.
For more information about the Professional Scholarly Publishing division of the Association of American Publishers, sponsor of this award, click here.
Geography and Earth Science and Geology
2025 Data Science for the Geosciences by Lijing Wang, David Zhen Yin, and Jef Caers
2024 The Land Beneath the Ice: The Pioneering Years of Radar Exploration in Antarctica by David J. Drewry
2023 Remnants of Ancient Life: The New Science of Old Fossils by Dale Greenwalt
2022 When the Sahara Was Green: How Our Greatest Desert Came to Be by Martin Williams
2021 Deep carbon : past to present, edited by Beth N. Orcutt, Isabelle Daniel, and Rajdeep Dasgupta
2020 Chemostratigraphy across major chronological boundaries, edited by by Alcides N. Sial, Claudio Gaucher, Muthuvairavasamy Ramkumar, and Valderez Pinto Ferreira
2019 Global flood hazard : applications in modeling, mapping and forecasting by Guy J-P. Schumann, Paul D. Bates, Heiko Apel, Giuseppe T. Aronica
2018 Earth history and paleogeography by Trond H. Torsvik and L. Robin M. Cocks; Salt tectonics : principles and practice by Martin P. A. Jackson and Michael R. Hudec (honorable mention); Photo atlas of mineral pseudomorphism by J. Theo Kloprogge, Rob Lavinsky, and Stretch Young (honorable mention)
2017 A concise geologic time scale : 2016 by James G. Ogg, Gabi Ogg, and Felix M. Gradstein
2016 Discovering the deep : a photographic atlas of the seafloor and ocean crust by Jeffrey A. Karson, Deborah S. Kelley, Daniel J. Fornari, Michael R. Perfit, and Timothy M. Shank; Atlas of structural geology by Soumyajit Mukherjee (honorable mention); The encyclopedia of volcanoes (2d ed.), Haraldur Sigurdsson, editor-in-chief (honorable mention)
2015 Atlas of meteorites by Monica Grady, Giovanni Pratesi and Vanni Moggi Cecchi; Developments in the theory and practice of cybercartography by Dr. D.R. Fraser Taylor and Tracey Lauriault (honorable mention) (3d ed (2019) here); Southern waters : the limits to abundance by Craig E. Colten (honorable mention)
2013 The lost world of Fossil Lake : snapshots from deep time by Lance Grande; Fossil mammals of Asia : neogene biostratigraphy and Chronology, edited by Xiaoming Wang, Lawrence J. Flynn, and Mikael Fortelius (honorable mention)
2012 Atlas of Yellowstone by W. Andrew Marcus, James E. Meacham, Ann W. Rodman, and Alethea Y. Steingisser; Dirty, sacred rivers : confronting South Asia's water crisis by Cheryl Colopy (honorable mention); Fundamentals of geobiology by Andrew H. Knoll, Donald E. Canfield, and Kurt O. Konhauser (honorable mention); How to build a habitable planet : the story of Earth from the big bang to humankind by Charles H. Langmuir and Wally Broecker (honorable mention)
2011 The fate of Greenland : lessons from abrupt climate change by Philip Conkling, et al; The roof at the bottom of the world : discovering the Transantarctic Mountains by Edmund Stump (honorable mention); The ripple effect : the fate of freshwater in the twenty-first century by Alex Prud'homme (honorable mention)
2010 Life in the world's oceans : diversity, distribution, and abundance by Alasdair McIntyre
2009 Gems and gemstones : timeless natural beauty of the mineral world by Lance Grande and Allison Augustyn; The Mojave Desert : ecosystem processes and sustainability, edited by Robert H. Webb, Lynn F. Fenstermaker, Jill S. Heaton, Debra L. Hughson, Eric V. McDonald and David M. Miller
2008 Worlds before Adam : the reconstruction of geohistory in the age of reform by Martin J. S. Rudwick; Dogs : their fossil relatives and evolutionary history by Xiaoming Wang & Richard H. Tedford (honorable mention); How the ocean works : an introduction to oceanography by Mark Denny (honorable mention)
2007 Evolution : what the fossils say and why it matters by Donald R. Prothero ; with original illustrations by Carl Buell; Hard road west : history & geology along the Gold Rush trail by Keith Heyer Meldahl (honorable mention)
2006 Mapping paradise : a history of heaven on earth by Alessandro Scafi; Atmospheric halos and the search for angle X by Walter Tape and Jarmo Moilanen (honorable mention)
2005 The essentials of medical geology : impacts of the natural environment on public health, editor-in-chief, Olle Selinus; Rivers of North America by Arthur C. Benke and Colbert E. Cushing
2004 Nature : an economic history by Geerat J. Vermeij; Beyond the stony mountains : nature in the American West from Lewis and Clark to today by Daniel B. Botkin (honorable mention)
2003 Handbook of weather, climate, and water : atmospheric chemistry, hydrology, and societal impacts by Thomas D. Potter and Bradley R. Colman; Handbook of weather, climate, and water : dynamics, climate, physical meteorology, weather systems, and measurements by Thomas D. Potter and Bradley R. Colman; Ancient wine by Patrick E. McGovern (honorable mention); Deforesting the Earth : from prehistory to global crisis by Michael Williams
2002 Hawaiian volcanoes : deep underwater perspectives by Eiichi Takahashi, Peter Lipman, Michael Garcia, Jiro Naka and Shigeo Aramaki; The earth's biosphere : evolution, dynamics and change by Vaclav Smil (honorable mention)
2001 Apollo's eye : a cartographic genealogy of the earth in the western imagination by Denis Cosgrove
2000 Mountain meteorology : fundamentals and applications by C. David Whiteman; The eternal darkness : a personal history of deep-sea exploration by Robert D. Ballard, with Will Hively (honorable mention)
1999 Encyclopedia of volcanoes, editor-in-chief, Haraldur Sigurdsson (2d ed. (2015) here)
1998 The Columbia gazetteer of the world, edited by Saul B. Cohen
1997 An introduction to satellite image interpretation by Eric D. Conway
1996 Encyclopedia of climate and weather, Stephen H. Schneider, editor in chief
1995 From Cape Cod to the Bay of Fundy : an environmental atlas of the Gulf of Maine by Philip W. Conkling
1994 Rivers of the United States, volume 1 : Estuaries by Ruth Patrick
1993 The tornado : its structure, dynamics, prediction, and hazards, C. Church ... [et al.], editors
1992 The Proterozoic biosphere : a multidisciplinary study edited by J. William Schopf and Cornelis Klein
1991 Out of the earth : civilization and the life of the soil by Daniel Hillel