Three Canadian authors are on the 2014 Lionel Gelber Prize longlist for English-language non-fiction on foreign affairs.
Ronald J. Diebert, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and an expert in cyber security, is nominated for Black Code: Surveillance, Privacy, and the Dark Side of the Internet (Signal/McClelland & Stewart). Margaret MacMillan makes the longlist for the second time with The War that Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 (Allen Lane Canada). (The renowned historian was shortlisted in 2007 for Nixon in China: The Week that Changed the World (Viking Canada).) The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty is journalist Nina Munk’s extensive correspondence on the Millennium Villages project in Africa. The book, published by Signal/McClelland & Stewart, was also a finalist for last year’s Governor General’s Literary Awards.
The rest of the longlist comprises The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide by Gary J. Bass (Knopf); A History of Future Cities by Daniel Brook (W.W. Norton); The Great Convergence: Asia, the West, and the Logic of One World by Kishore Mahbubani (Public Affairs); Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America’s Fight over World War II, 1939 – 1941 by Lynne Olson (Random House); Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser (Penguin Press); Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy from 1453 to the Present by Brendan Simms (Basic Books); and The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order by Benn Steil (Princeton University Press).
Jury chair William Thorsell said in a statement: “These are books of striking originality and insight. They range from ground-breaking works on diplomatic history to new perspectives on the dynamics of the world in the age of the Internet, growing affluence and changing players. Readers seeking to better comprehend the roots and course of our international system will be deeply indebted to these authors.”
A partnership with the Lionel Gelber Foundation, Foreign Policy magazine, and the Munk School of Global Affairs, the prize awards $15,000 to the winner. Last year’s winner was Chrystia Freeland for Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else (Doubleday Canada).
The winner will be selected by an international jury and announced on March 31. A shortlist will be released on Feb. 10.