Faculty Book-Length Publications

The American College Town

by Blake Gumprecht

University of Massachusetts Press, November 2008; published in paperback 

2010 Winner of the Association of American Geographers' John Brinckerhoff Jackson Prize and a Choice magazine Outstanding Academic Title

“If a friend should ever ask for a book that epitomizes the best that geography can offer, I recommend Blake Gumprecht’s new volume as a near-perfect candidate. He takes a landscape familiar … and makes us see it afresh. He dissects its complexity with astonishing thoroughness, using a rich mix of archival material, personal observation, and field interviews. He offers deep case studies, but remembers the need for broader context. Finally, he assembles the total package with spirited, clean prose, some of the best academic writing I have ever seen.” – James R. Shortridge, Journal of Cultural Geography

“At last! With this literally unprecedented volume, Blake Gumprecht has filled what may have been the most grievous of gaps in the literature of our American settlement landscape. Moreover, he has done so in magisterial fashion by telling us in wonderfully readable prose virtually everything one might wish to know about those many scores of special places. I have read it with unalloyed pleasure and hope that a vast number of readers will share my joy.” – Wilbur Zelinsky, Annals of the Association of American Geographers

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The Razor’s Edge: International Boundaries and Political Geography: Essays in Honour of Professor Gerald Blake

Edited by Clive Schofield, David Newman, Alasdair Drysdale, and Janet Allison Brown
Kluwer Law International, 2002

excerpt from book cover: Long recognized as the leading authority in the field of political geography with several definitive works to his credit, Gerald Blake has been active since the 1980s as an advisor to governments, business firms, and legal tribunals on boundary delimitation issues. The organization he founded, the International Boundaries Research Unit (IBRU) at the University of Durham, has played a major role in resolving numerous boundary issues in the Middle East, East Asia, and Africa, especially through its hands on technical training workshops for government officials charged with negotiating or managing international boundaries.

This festschrift by thirty of his colleagues and former students reflects the topics and regional preoccupations Professor Blake has kept returning to throughout his long career, especially the Middle East, maritime boundaries, and the relation between borders and demographics. Several of the authors extend his work in such areas as Arctic jurisdiction, environmental issues of transboundary water management, and geographic information systems (GIS).