Michael J. Rawson is a historian, author, and associate professor at the City University of New York's (CUNY) Brooklyn College.^[1] He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2011 for Eden on the Charles: The Making of Boston.^[1][2][3] The book explores Boston's development in relation to its natural surroundings.^[4] Rawson received the American Public Works Association (APWA) Abel Wolman Award in 2011.^[1]

Rawson was previously on the faculties of University of Wisconsin and Stanford University. He received his Ph.D at the University of Wisconsin in 2005.^[1] From 2005 to 2007, he was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University.^[5][6] Rawson has served on the Public Works Historical Society's board of trustees.^[1]

Selected publications

• "Discovering the Final Frontier: The Seventeenth-Century Encounter with the Lunar Environment," Environmental History 20, no. 2 (April 2015): 194-216.
• “Creating the Urban Hydraulic Machine: Water, Technology, and the Building of Boston,” in Terje Tvedt and Terje Oestigaard, eds., A History of Water, Series 3, Vol. 1. From Jericho to Cities in the Seas: A History of Urbanization and Water Systems (forthcoming from I. B. Tauris).
• “The March of Bricks and Mortar” (invited essay), Environmental History 17, no. 4, October 2012.
• “Rethinking Conservation: The Nineteenth-Century Battle to Save Boston Harbor,” in Richard Judd and Blake Harrison, eds., A Landscape History of New England (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011).
• “A Horse Is a Horse, of Course, but Also Much More: Recovering the Animal Contribution to the Urbanization and Industrialization of America,” review essay in Journal of Urban History 37, no. 4 (July 2011): 614-618.
• “Gendered Waters: Boston’s Frog Pond Fountain” in Ari Hynynen, Petri Juuti, and Tapio Katko, eds., Water Fountains in the Cityscape (Kansas City, MO: Public Works Historical Society, 2011).
• “What Lies Beneath: Science, Nature, and the Making of Boston Harbor,” Journal of Urban History 35, no. 5 (July 2009): 675-697; Finalist, 2010 Alice Hamilton Prize and 2010 Fishel-Calhoun Prize for best article. Reprinted in Anthony Penna and Conrad Wright, eds., Remaking Boston: An Environmental History of the City and Its Surroundings (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009).
• “On Common Ground: The Overlapping Fields of Environmental History and Planning History,” review essay in Journal of Planning History 7, no. 4 (November 2008): 354-360.
• “The Nature of Water: Reform and the Antebellum Crusade for Municipal Water in Boston,” Environmental History 9 (July 2004): 411-435; winner, 2005 Michael Robinson Award from the Public Works Historical Society for the best article in the field of public works history.

Books

• Eden on the Charles: The Making of Boston Harvard University Press (2011)^[7]
• The Nature of Tomorrow; A History of the Environmental Future Yale University Press (2021)^[8]