3:07 p.m., April 27, 2010----Timothy LeCain, who earned his doctorate in history from the University of Delaware in 1999, has won a national environmental prize for his recent book, Mass Destruction: The Men and Giant Mines that Wired America and Scarred the Planet.

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LeCain's book, published in 2009 by Rutgers University Press, was recognized by the American Society for Environmental History (ASEH), which awarded the work its George Perkins Marsh Prize as the best new book in environmental history. Marsh is considered a pioneer in the movement to protect and restore t he environment.

Mass Destruction is a study of two huge, open-pit copper mines in Butte, Mont., and Salt Lake City. The ASEH prize committee noted that the book “takes the reader on a marvelous journey, which starts with cosmic super-giant stars and their role in the creation of copper and ends with the engineers that built the technologies of 'mass destruction' to access the king metal.”

LeCain, a Montana native, is an associate professor in the Department of History and Philosophy at Montana State University in Bozeman. At UD, he worked with history Profs. David Hounshell, who has relocated, and Reed Geiger, who retired in 1998.