The 2024 Cundill History Prize
McGill University has announced the shortlist for the 2024 Cundill History Prize, which honors exceptional works that offer fresh perspectives on the past. As one of the most prestigious awards for history writing, the Cundill Prize recognizes books that “speak to major issues in the present day.” This list includes shortlisted titles, along with the previously announced longlist for this year.
13 books
Winner
Dr. Keisha N. Blain
Native Nations: A Millennium in North America
Kathleen Duval"An essential American history... Examining both past and present from an indigenous rather than a European perspective, [Kathleen] DuVal fuses a millennium of Native American history into a thought-provoking, persuasive whole." – The Wall Street Journal
Dr. Keisha N. BlainHardcover, 2024
$38.00$19.00 + Free shipping50% off your first book
Finalist
Mara
Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights
Dylan C. Penningroth“Before the Movement presents an original and provocative account of how civil law was experienced by Black citizens and how their 'legal lives' changed over time... [an] ambitious, stimulating, and provocative book.” – New York Review of Books
MaraHardcover, 2023
$35.00$17.50 + Free shipping50% off your first book
Finalist
Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia
Gary J. Bass“Bass is a marvelous writer. He has a sharp, clear eye for telling detail. . . . Readers will learn a great deal about a fascinating time that saw the collapse of Western empire in the Far East, the rise of Communist China, and the astonishing birth of a modern, peaceful, democratic Japan.” – Air Mail
Hardcover, 2023
$46.00$23.00 + Free shipping50% off your first book
Shortlist
Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins & Nicolas Niarchos
The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination
Stuart A. Reid"Masterfully stitching together testimonies like these as well as interviews, investigations, diplomatic cables and a thorough assessment of a range of declassified files, the book often reads like a John le Carré novel, partly thanks to Reid's gripping writing style… Groundbreaking." – Financial Times
Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins & Nicolas NiarchosHardcover, 2023
$35.00$17.50 + Free shipping50% off your first book
Shortlist
Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins & Anton Jäger
They Called It Peace: Worlds of Imperial Violence
Lauren Benton"This history demonstrates how European imperial expansion in Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Australia from 1400 to 1900 was fuelled by so-called small wars… Benton, a historian at Yale, uses harrowing case studies from around the world, and contextualizes events with the work of contemporary intellectuals." – The New Yorker
Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins & Anton JägerHardcover, 2024
$39.95$19.98 + Free shipping50% off your first book
Shortlist
Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins & Guardian Books
Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century
Joya Chatterji"Chatterji tells the story of the subcontinent's recent history in a fluent sweeping arc... Wonderfully enjoyable to read... [and] sure to become a classic." – The Guardian
Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins & Guardian BooksHardcover, 2023
$40.00$20.00 + Free shipping50% off your first book
Shortlist
UNC Press & Drew McKevitt
Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War America
Andrew C. McKevitt“Sharp, fascinating, devastating, exhaustively researched and often wryly funny, this indispensable book -- one of the best works of nonfiction this year -- details how America came to be not just a gun country but the gun country.” – The Washington Post
UNC Press & Drew McKevittPaperback, 2023
$24.95$12.48 + Free shipping50% off your first book
Shortlist
Feltrinelli Librerie & Il Post
Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World
David Van Reybrouck"David Van Reybrouck's immensely readable new history...fills an important gap....Van Reybrouck has visited just about every place that figures in Indonesia's history, and evokes them with a narrative zest all too rare among historians." – The Atlantic
Feltrinelli Librerie & Il PostHardcover, 2024
$32.50$16.25 + Free shipping50% off your first book
Longlist
Amitav Ghosh & Nilanjana Roy 📚🦊
Smoke and Ashes: Opium's Hidden Histories
Amitav Ghosh"Ghosh's elegant history of the plant's influence is both a tribute to what he calls 'the historical agency of botanical matter' and a reckoning with the imperial past." – The Economist
Amitav Ghosh & Nilanjana Roy 📚🦊Hardcover, 2024
$32.00$16.00 + Free shipping50% off your first book
Longlist
Fintan O'Toole & John Lewis-Stempel
Remembering Peasants: A Personal History of a Vanished World
Patrick Joyce"Joyce takes us to some of the places Europeans have established to remember peasants ...But the most poignant of all are journeys to his ancestral home in Ireland's far west... As its title indicates, Joyce's lament is also a call to remember. Well written, expansive and often deeply moving, this is a fitting monument to Europe's peasants." – The Financial Times
Fintan O'Toole & John Lewis-StempelHardcover, 2024
$30.00$15.00 + Free shipping50% off your first book