The Writers’ Trust of Canada has announced the finalists for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. Selected for examining a political subject of interest to Canadians, the five non-fiction books cover topics ranging from health care to living beside barriers to transit policies.

The nominees were chosen by former NDP leader Ed Broadbent, National Post and iPolitics.ca columnist Tasha Kheiriddin, and novelist and translator Daniel Poliquin.

The finalists for the $25,000 prize are:

• Walls: Travels Along the Barricades, Marcello Di Cintio (Goose Lane Editions)
• Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile, Taras Grescoe (HarperCollins Canada)
• What We Talk About When We Talk About War, Noah Richler (Goose Lane Editions)
• Chronic Condition: Why Canada’s Health-Care System Needs to be Dragged into the 21st Century, Jeffrey Simpson (Allen Lane Canada)
• The Merger Delusion: How Swallowing Its Suburbs Made an Even Bigger Mess of Montreal, Peter F. Trent (McGill-Queen’s University Press)

The winner will be announced March 6. Each nominee receives $2,500.