The John Brinckerhoff Jackson Book Prize
The John Brinckerhoff Jackson Book Prize is awarded to the author of a book published within the past three years on a subject pertaining to landscape studies. There are no restrictions with regard to period, topic, or author's nationality. Only books based on original research and those that break new ground in method or interpretation will be considered. The purpose of this prize is to reward contributors to the intellectual vitality of garden history and landscape studies. The jury considers each submission on the basis of its success in expanding the field to new areas or increasing knowledge within an existing branch of the discipline. It seeks to support authors with an ability to write for a general readership as well as for a scholarly audience.
ELIGIBILITY + APPLICATION PROCESS
ELIGIBILITY
Books published on a landscape-related subject during a three-year period ending in the current calendar year are eligible for consideration by the Awards Committee.
APPLICATION PROCESS
Publishers must send books by mail to each of the appointed jury members before May 1. A cover letter should include a complete mailing address, phone number, and email address of the author(s). To request the mailing addresses for the jury, please email the book prize jury chair, Elizabeth K. Meyer at LSIbookprize@virginia.edu and include "J.B. Jackson Book Prize Application" as the subject line.
2026 Winner & Finalist
2026 J.B. Jackson Book Prize Winner
MONTSERRAT BOVEHI ROSICH & SETH DENIZEN
Thinking Through Soil: Wastewater Agriculture in the Mezquital Valley
Harvard Design Press, 2025
In cities, soil comprises a blurry category whose boundaries are both empirically uncertain and politically contested. By considering the specific material and political conditions of the world’s largest wastewater agricultural system, Thinking Through Soil: Wastewater Agriculture in the Mezquital Valley offers a design methodology derived through a sustained engagement with Mexico’s most controversial soil, and imagines what a better environmental future might look like in central Mexico. This case study demonstrates a way to “think through soil” in urban areas—to privilege soil as the basis for decision-making in city planning and design— and asserts an approach to soil knowledge with global utility, particularly for places where environmental problems are complex, long-term, and have no purely technical solution.
Montserrat Bonvehi Rosich is a licensed Spanish architect and urban designer. Seth Denizen is a researcher and design practitioner trained in landscape architecture, evolutionary biology, and human geography.
2026 J.B. Jackson Book Prize Finalist
KATJA BRUISCH
Burning Swamps: Peat and the Forgotten Margins of Russia's Fossil Economy
Cambridge University Press, 2025
What happens if we tell the history of the planetary emergency from the margins? In Burning Swamps: Peat and the Forgotten Margins of Russia’s Fossil Economy, Katja Bruisch traces the forgotten role of peat in Russian industrialisation and electrification and points to the social and ecological legacies of this history. Providing a corrective to more familiar energy history narratives dominated by coal, oil, and gas and with an eye to the intersecting histories of labor and matter, this book moves beyond the socialism/capitalism binary and invites us to recognize the role of seemingly marginal people, resources and places in the broader trajectory of planetary change.
Katja Bruisch is the Ussher Assistant Professor in Environmental History Trinity College Dublin.
