Associate Professor of History Ling Zhang‘s book The River, the Plain, and the State: An Environmental Drama in Northern Song China, 1048-1128 (Cambridge University Press, 2016) has received the 2017 George Perkins Marsh Prize as the best book on environmental history from the American Society for Environmental History, the premier organization in this emerging, interdisciplinary field. The book centers on an event in northeast China in 1048, when the Yellow River breached its banks. The river drastically changed its course and turned the Hebei Plain into a delta, altering – and in many cases destroying – the lives of millions in Hebei. Zhang drew on elements of geography, hydraulic engineering and political science, as well as scientific data, to write the book. Read more from BC News.