The McGill University has unveiled the shortlist for the 2025 Cundill History Prize, an annual award that recognises exceptional works of history, according to a lithub.com. The prize, which includes a grand award of $75,000 for the winner and $10,000 for each of the two runners-up, celebrates works that demonstrate excellence in “craft, communication and consequence.”
This year’s selection of eight books showcases the remarkable breadth and quality of modern historical writing.
According to juror François Furstenberg, a history professor at Johns Hopkins University, the shortlisted titles “demonstrate that great works of history come in many forms.” The list includes biographically-focused studies, vast geographic surveys and fresh interpretations of well-known events. Furstenberg added that all the nominated books are “brilliantly written” and “break new ground.”
The three finalists will be revealed on Tuesday, September 30, with the winner announced on Thursday, October 30 during the Cundill History Prize Festival in Montreal. The distinguished shortlist features:
•Wages for Housework: The Story of a Movement, an Idea, a Promise by Emily Callaci
•A Fractured Liberation: Korea Under US Occupation by Kornel Chang
•The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe by Marlene L. Daut
•America, América: A New History of the New World by Greg Grandin
•To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement by Benjamin Nathans
•Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants’ War by Lyndal Roper
•The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life by Sophia Rosenfeld
•The Girl in the Middle: A Recovered History of the American West by Martha A. Sandweiss
