John J. Bukowczyk, Nora Faires, David R. Smith & Randy William Widdis

John J. Bukowczyk, Nora Faires, David R. Smith, and Randy William Widdis. Permeable Border: The Great Lakes Basin as Transnational Region, 1650-1990 (University of Pittsburgh Press and University of Calgary Press, 2005).
Among a strong field of entries, Permeable Border stood out as a particularly successful effort to push forward understandings of Canadian-American borderlands via emerging ideas of transnationalism.  Taking a broad sweep of time, and balancing new research with critical historiographical analysis, the border is examined as a “human creation.. typically invisible, geographically illogical, militarily indefensible,  and emotionally inescapable” – a border that paradoxically strengthens and disappears simultaneously amidst competing forces of nationalism and globalization.  (AHA Perspectives, vol. 45, no. 3 March 2007, page 33).
(awarded at AHA Annual Meeting in Atlanta)