Brown University Book Award

2025-2026 Book Award

What is the Brown University Book Award?

Since 1960, the Brown University Book Award has honored the potential of outstanding high school juniors. Presented annually at school award ceremonies both here at home as well as abroad, the honor distinguishes students who demonstrate excellence in written and verbal communication.

More than just a prize, the award connects young scholars to the university's intellectual community. Each year, a committee selects a book written by a distinguished Brown faculty member or alumnus to serve as the award. Sponsored largely through the generosity of Brown alumni, the program celebrates academic achievement while introducing the next generation of leaders to the spirit of Open Curriculum and the university's global impact.

This Year's Book Award Selection

Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait

By Bathsheba Demuth A.B. '06, A.M. '07, Dean's Associate Professor of History and Environment and Society at Brown University

Winner of the George Perkins Marsh Prize (Best Book in Environmental History)
Winner of the John H. Dunning Prize (American Historical Association)
Named a "Best Book of the Year" by NPR, Kirkus Reviews, and Library Journal

"Floating Coast is a historian's Moby-Dick, a great white whale of a book that spans centuries and links landscapes, living beings, and the flux of time into a marvelously readable narrative." - Amitav Ghosh, author of The Great Derangement

Floating Coast offers a groundbreaking look at Beringia, the Arctic land and waters stretching from Russia to Canada. For millennia, the Iñupiat, Yupik, and Chukchi peoples have called these unforgiving territories home. But as Demuth reveals in this lyrical narrative, the region quickly became the site of an ongoing experiment: How, under conditions of extreme scarcity, would the competing modern ideologies of capitalism and communism control the resources they craved?

Demuth shows how human ambition, from the hunting of whales and walruses to the extraction of gold and oil, has shaped the environment and how the enviornment, in turn, checks human power. Merging history, science, and economics into a single, compelling story, Bathsheba Demuth presents the profound tale of this "floating coast" and the dynamic changes and unforseen consequences that human desire has brought to our finite world.

Critical Acclaim

"A poetic meditation on the devastations of modernity... Whale hunters and reindeer herders, greedy capitalists and utopian planners, hopeful prospectors and raw-material-hungry government bereaucrats appear on the stage in this analytically powerful book." - Sven Beckert, author of Empire of Cotton

"Floating Coast is an extraordinary piece of history writing, seamlessly weaving together disparate elements. It is astonishingly rich in ethnographic detail, ecological precision, economic circumstance and historical texture." - Sverker Sölin, Nature

"[A] deeply studied, deeply felt book that lays out a devastating but complex history of change, notes what faces us now, and dares us to imagine better." - Genevieve Valentine, NPR

About the Author

Bathsheba Demuth is a writer and environmental historian whose expertise is forged as much on the dog sled as it is in the archive. Her deep connection to northern places began at age 18, when she moved to the village of Old Crow in the Yukon to train huskies for several years.

Specializing in the lands and seas of the Russian and North American Arctic, she explores how the histories of people, ideas, and ecologies intersect. In addition to her prize-winning first book, her writing has appeared in publications from The American Historical Review to The New Yorker and The Best American Science and Nature Writing. She holds a B.A. and M.A. from Brown University, and a Ph.D from the University of California, Berkeley. With the support of a Carnegie Fellowship, she is currently writing a biography of the Yukon River watershed.

Interested in Sponsoring a School?

The Brown University Book Award flourishes through the generorsity of our alumni and friends. Sponsoring an award is a meaningful way to honor student achievement while strengthening the university's presence in your local community.

Whether you wish to support a specific institution or help a school in need, the process is simple:

Select a School: You may designate a specific high school to support - such as your own alma mater or a local school - or we can pair you with an institution currently seeking a sponsor.
- Note: If designating a specific school, please ensure they are willing to participate. The school must agree to present the award at their awards ceremony. As not all schools have these events or choose to participate, we recommend confirming wiht the school first.
Your Level of Involvement: You determine your degree of participation. Many sponsors choose to simply fund the award and allow the school administration to handle the presentation. There are some sponsors, however, who are more involved and find it rewarding to present the award personally at the school's annual ceremony.
All-Inclusive Contribution: The cost of sponsorship is $37.00. This covers the current year's selected book, a custom commemorative bookplate, and shipping costs.

Sample Bookplate:

Size: 5"w x 7"h

Past Book Award Selections:

2025-2026 - Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait by Bathsheba Demuth A.B. '06, A.M. '07, Dean's Associate Professor of History and Environment and Society at Brown University - $37.00
2024-2025 - James by Percival Everett, Class of '82
2023-2024 - Skinfolk by Matthew Pratt Guterl, L. Herbert Ballou University Professor of Africana Studies and American Studies at Brown University - $39.00
2022-2023 - Daughters of the Flower Fragrant Garden: Two Sisters Separated by China's Civil War by Zhuqing Li, Visintg Associate Professor of East Asian Studies - $37.00
2021-2022 - Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America by Eyal Press '92 - $37.00
2020-2021 - The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another by Ainissa Ramirez '90 - $37.00
2019-2020 - Proving Einstein Right: The Daring Expeditions that Changed How We Look at the Universe by S. James Gates, Jr. (Ford Foundation Professor of Physics) and Cathie Pelletier - $37.95
2018-2019 - The Human Instinct: How We Evolved to Have Reason, Consciousness, and Free Will by Kenneth R. Miller '70 - $35.95
2017-2018 - It's All Relative: Adventures Up and Down the World's Family Tree by A.J. Jacobs '90 - $35.95
2016-2017 - Defying the Nazis by Artemis Joukowsky III - $25.00
2015-2016 - Liberty's Torch by Elzabeth Mitchell '88 - $36.00
2014-2015 - The Promise of a Pencil by Adam Braun '06 - $35.00
2013-2014 - Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution by Nathaniel Philbrick '78 - $39.00
2012-2013 - Thinking the Twentieth Century by Tony Judt with Timothy Snyder '91 - $40.00

Sponsors & Participating Schools

Sponsors choose the school(s) they would like to sponsor. The school then must agree to present the Brown university Book Award at their awards ceremony. The sponsor may choose the degree of participation, while most just sponsor the book award and let the school handle the selection and resentation of the book award, others attend or even present the book award at the awards ceremony. A select few even help with the selection of the recipient.

Brown University Book Award Administrator

Contact: Trade Customer Service
Phone: 301-863-3168
Email: book_award@brown.edu