Congratulations go out to Jacob Darwin Hamblin, associate professor of history at Oregon State University, who has been selected as the winner of the 2014 Paul Birdsall Prize for his latest book Arming Mother Nature: The Birth of Catastrophic Environmentalism (Oxford University Press, 2013).
The Birdsall Prize is awarded biennially by the American Historical Association (AHA) to honor the most important work published in English on European military or strategic history since 1870. The prize will be awarded during a ceremony at the Association’s 129th Annual Meeting in New York, NY, January 2-5, 2015.
Dr. Hamblin is also the Director of the new Environmental Arts and Humanities Initiative at Oregon State. You can learn more about Dr. Hamblin here.
Hamblin’s book was selected by a prize review committee of AHA members including Jonathan Reed Winkler, Chair (Wright State Univ.), Nicoletta F. Gullace (Univ. of New Hampshire, Durham), and David Holloway (Stanford Univ.).
“Hamblin has crafted an international history of the creation of ‘catastrophic environmentalism,’ the idea that mankind could and should interfere with the environment to achieve strategic ends,” commented Jonathan Reed Winkler, the 2014 Paul Birdsall Prize Committee chair and associate professor of history at Wright State University. “The implications of his discoveries will reach beyond the fields of military and strategic history.”
The Birdsall Prize was established in 1985 by a generous gift from Professor Hans Gatzke, who remained anonymous until his death. Paul Birdsall (d. 1970) was a historian of European diplomatic and military affairs and a foreign service officer.
The American Historical Association is a nonprofit membership organization founded in 1884 and incorporated by Congress in 1889 for the promotion of historical studies. The AHA provides leadership for the discipline, protects academic freedom, develops professional standards, aids in the pursuit and publication of scholarship, and supplies various services to sustain and enhance the work of its members. As the largest organization of historians in the United States, the AHA is comprised of over 13,000 members and serves historians representing every historical period and geographical area.
For further information, visit www.historians.org or call 202-544-2422.
