Professor Hudson Meadwell, interim dean of McGill University’s faculty of arts, has announced the shortlist for the 2015 Cundill Prize in historical literature.

The prize recognizes excellent titles of the genre published the year prior by an author of any nationality. This year’s jury was comprised of Anthony Cary, British Commissioner of the Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan; David Frum, author and senior editor at The Atlantic; Chad Gaffield, University of Ottawa history professor and digital scholarship chair; Maya Jasanoff, Harvard University history professor; and Anna Porter, author and co-founder of Key Porter Books.

The shortlist was selected from 159 submissions and includes four U.S. university professors, a German philosopher, and a professor at the University of London:

• Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (Alfred A. Knopf)
• Susan Pedersen, The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire (Oxford University Press)
• Claudio Saunt, West of the Revolution: An Uncommon History of 1776 (W.W. Norton & Company)
• Stuart B. Schwartz, Sea of Storms: A History of Hurricanes in the Greater Caribbean from Columbus to Katrina (Princeton University Press)
• Bettina Stangneth, Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer (Bodley Head)
• Nikolaus Wachsmann, KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps (Little, Brown/Hachette)

Three finalists, to be announced the week of Oct. 5, will each receive a $10,000 (U.S.) recognition of excellence prize. The recipient of the $75,000 (U.S.) award will be honoured in Toronto on Nov. 2.