The Cundill History Prize

  Looking For A Good History Book or For Good News For History Majors?

The winner was just announced - she is Julia Lovell for Maoism: A Global History
"Julia Lovell’s Maoism: A Global History has won the Cundill History Prize. The nearly $100,000 prize ($75,000 U.S.), administered by McGill University, is awarded to the best English-language history writing.
Lovell is a British writer and translator and a professor on modern China at the University of London. In Maoism, she writes about the impact of the political ideology around the world and how it continues to influence China.
In his citation, historian Alan Taylor, the jury chair, called Maoism a “revelation” for the way in which it demonstrates the ideology’s influence on disparate societies including Peru, Indonesia, Europe, and the U.S."

A couple of years ago I called to your attention the Cundill Prize in my post, Christmas Shopping for Historians where I discussed the prize and some of the past winners. The winner for this year has just been announced. For more details about the prize and Mr. Cundill see this website at McGill University. Here are some data about the 2019 nominees.

THE LONGLIST FOR THE 2019 CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE

The 14 titles chosen were announced June 25, 2019. On Sept. 20, the nominees were reduced to 8. On October 17th it was revealed that the 3 finalists were all women: Mary Fulbrook, Jill Lepore and Julia Lovell.

Sunil Amrith
Unruly Waters: How Rains, Rivers, Coasts, and Seas Have Shaped Asia's History
Basic Books (US), Allen Lane (UK)
(Chosen as one of the top 8 on Sept. 20, 2019)

Helen Berry
Orphans of Empire: The Fate of London's Foundlings
Oxford University Press (UK)
(Chosen as one of the top 8 on Sept. 20, 2019)

David Blight
Frederick Douglass: American Prophet
Simon & Schuster (US)
(Chosen as one of the top 8 on Sept. 20, 2019)

Mary Fulbrook
Reckonings: Legacies of Nazi Persecution and the Quest for Justice
Oxford University Press (UK)
(Chosen as one of the top 8 on Sept. 20, 2019)
"In Reckonings: Legacies of Nazi Persecution and the Quest of Justice (Oxford University Press), the Professor of German History at UCL Mary Fulbrook explores the lives of both the victims and the perpetrators of the Holocaust. A lifetime achievement by one of the most renowned experts in the field, this encompassing work – which won the UK’s Wolfson History Prize earlier this year – expands our understanding of the Holocaust, and its lingering aftermath."

Jay Geller
The Scholems: A Story of the German-Jewish Bourgeoisie from Emancipation to Destruction
Cornell University Press (US)

Toby Green
A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution 
The University of Chicago Press (US), Allen Lane (UK)
(Chosen as one of the top 8 on Sept. 20, 2019)

Ramachandra Guha
Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World, 1914-1948 
Random House Canada (Canada), Allen Lane (UK), Penguin Random House (US), Penguin India (India)

Victoria Johnson
American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic
Liveright Publishing (US)
(Chosen as one of the top 8 on Sept. 20, 2019)

Jill Lepore
These Truths: A History of the United States 
W. W. Norton & Company (US)
(Chosen as one of the top 8 on Sept. 20, 2019)
"With These Truths: A History of the United States (W. W. Norton & Company), the Harvard Professor and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore delivers an ambitious one-volume history of the United States which places truth itself – a devotion to facts, proof, and evidence – at the centre of the nation’s history. Taking the reader up to the election of Donald Trump, this magisterial account is a reckoning with the beauty and tragedy of American history."

Julia Lovell
Maoism: A Global History 
The Bodley Head (UK), Knopf (US)
(Chosen as one of the top 8 on Sept. 20, 2019)
"From the tea plantations of north India to the sierras of the Andes, from Paris’s fifth arrondissement to the fields of Tanzania, Julia Lovell, Professor of Modern China at Birkbeck College, University of London, delivers a re-evaluation of Maoism as a significant global force in her sweeping Maoism: A Global History (The Bodley Head, Knopf). This landmark history arrives at a time when disagreements and conflicts between China and the West are on the rise, and the need to understand the political legacy of Maoism is urgent and growing."

Steve Luxenberg
Separate: The Story of Plessy v. Ferguson, and America's Journey from Slavery to Segregation
W. W. Norton & Company (US)

Jonathan Phillips
The Life and Legend of the Sultan Saladin 
The Bodley Head (UK), Yale University Press (US)

Alexandra Popoff
Vasily Grossman and the Soviet Century
Yale University Press (US)

Sue Prideaux
I am Dynamite! A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche 
Faber & Faber (UK), Tim Duggan Books (US)