Image: Cundill History Prize
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
Speaking to ‘Major Issues in the Present Day’
As the autumn swarm of book and publishing contest announcements continues, we look today (September 9) at the US$75,000 Cundill History Prize, which late last month announced its 2024 longlist.
That shortlist of eight titles follows the release in August of its 13-book longlist. On October 3, the program follows with yet another list of three “finalists,” and a winner’s announcement is set for October 30 during a “Cundill History Prize Festival” in the program’s home city of Montreal.
In this group of eight books, there’s work from three university presses: Princeton, North Carolina, and Yale.
One of two books is from the independent house WW Norton’s imprint Liveright, which also on Tuesday (September 10), also releases Reagan: His Life and Legend by Max Boot, the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow in national security studies with the Council on Foreign Relations.
There are four books from Penguin Random House, two from the United States’ division and two from PRH UK, while one shortlisted title is from the UK’s Pan Macmillan.
Rana Mitter
In a comment on the shortlist, jury chair Rana Mitter is quoted, saying, “One element that stands out among the brilliant books on this shortlist is timeliness.
“Although all are products of years of deep research, they touch on topics—the balance between freedom and responsibility, the need to account for and atone for war, the continuing rise of the Global South—that speak to major issues in the present day.”
The Cundill History Prize 2024 Shortlist
| Author | Title | Publisher / Imprint |
| Gary J. Bass | Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia | Pan Macmillan / Picador |
| Lauren Benton | They Called It Peace: Worlds of Imperial Violence | Princeton University Press |
| Joya Chatterji | Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century | Penguin Random House / The Bodley Head and Yale University Press |
| Kathleen DuVal | Native Nations: A Millennium in North America | Penguin Random House |
| Andrew C. McKevitt |
Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War America |
University of North Carolina Press |
| Dylan C. Penningroth | Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights | WW Norton / Liveright |
| Stuart A. Reid |
The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination |
Penguin Random House / Alfred A. Knopf |
| David Van Reybrouck |
Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World |
Penguin Random House / The Bodley Head and WW Norton |
Joining Mitter on the jury panel this year are:
- New York University professor Nicole Eustace
- New York Times health reporter and Poynter fellow Stephanie Nolen
- Vanderbilt University professor Moses Ochonu
- Indiana University-Bloomington and Hutton Honors College dean Rebecca L. Spring
Previous Winners of the Cundill History Prize
- Tania Branigan (2023)
- Tiya Miles (2022)
- Marjoleine Kars (2021)
- Camilla Townsend (2020)
- Julia Lovell (2019)
- Maya Jasanoff (2018)
- Daniel Beer (2017)
- Thomas W. Laqueur (2016)
- Susan Pedersen (2015)
- Gary Bass (2014)
- Anne Applebaum (2013)
- Stephen Platt (2012)
- Sergio Luzzatto (2011)
- Diarmaid MacCulloch (2010)
- Lisa Jardine (2009)
- Stuart B. Schwartz (2008)
Peter Cundill
The Cundill History Prize was founded by Peter Cundill (1938-2011), who was the founder of the Cundill Value Fund. He established the Cundill History Prize in 2008, two years after being diagnosed with Fragile X Tremor/Ataxia Syndrome, with which he died in London.
In a comment on the longlist’s release this year, Lisa Shapiro, dean of the faculty of arts at Montreal’s McGill University—the seat of the Cundill program—is quoted, saying, “The jury for the 2024 Cundill History Prize has done outstanding work in arriving at a longlist of 13 titles from a very competitive field, representing the very best in historical writing and scholarship.
“These books also highlight the range of new perspectives on both past events and our present context afforded by high-quality history.”
More from Publishing Perspectives on the Cundill History Prize is here. More on the international industry’s publishing and book awards is here, more on the Canadian book market is here, and more on nonfiction is here.