US$75K Cundill History Prize shortlist announced

The shortlist for the 2023 Cundill History Prize, which rewards ‘the best history writing in English’, have been announced.

The shortlisted works are:

• The Huxleys: An intimate history of evolution (Alison Bashford, University of Chicago Press)
• Red Memory: Living, remembering and forgetting China’s Cultural Revolution (Tania Branigan, Faber)
• The Declassification Engine: What history reveals about America’s top secrets (Matthew Connelly, Vintage)
• The Perfection of Nature: Animals, breeding, and race in the Renaissance (Mackenzie Cooley, University of Chicago Press)
• Queens of a Fallen World: The lost women of Augustine’s Confessions (Kate Cooper, Basic Books)
• Dust on the Throne: The search for Buddhism in India (Douglas Ober, Navayana Press)
• Charged: A history of batteries and lessons for a clean energy future (James Morton Turner, University of Washington Press)
• The Madman in the White House: Sigmund Freud, Ambassador Bullitt, and the lost psychobiography of Woodrow Wilson (Patrick Weil, Harvard University Press).

The winner, awarded prize money of US$75,000 (A$117,600), will be announced on 8 November. The two runners-up will each receive US$10,000 (A$15,500).

Administered by McGill University in Montreal, the Cundill Prize is awarded annually to an individual from any country for a book that has had or is likely to have ‘a profound literary, social and academic impact in the area of history’.

For more information about the Cundill History Prize, visit the prize website.

Category: International news