Eight books spanning a range of topics, including the German Peasants’ War of 1524, the Haitian Revolution of the 1790s, and the international Wages for Housework campaign of the 1970s, have been shortlisted for the 2025 Cundill History Prize.

The $75,000 (U.S.) prize, administered by McGill University, is awarded annually to a book published in English that embodies historical scholarship, originality, literary quality, and broad appeal.

The shortlist was selected by a jury comprised of chair – and 2022 Cundill finalist – Ada Ferrer and historians and writers Sunil Amrith, François Furstenberg, Afua Hirsch, and Francesca Trivellato. The eight shortlisted titles were selected from a 15-book longlist announced in July.

The shortlisted books are:

• Wages for Housework: The Story of a Movement, an Idea, a Promise by Emily Callaci (Allen Lane/Penguin Random House)
• A Fractured Liberation: Korea Under US Occupation by Kornel Chang (The Belknap Press/Harvard University Press)
• The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe by Marlene L. Daut (Knopf/Penguin Random House)
• America, América: A New History of the New World by Greg Grandin (Penguin Press)
• To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement by Benjamin Nathans (Princeton University Press)
• Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants’ War by Lyndal Roper (John Murray Press/Hachette Book Group)
• The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life by Sophia Rosenfeld (Princeton University Press)
• The Girl in the Middle: A Recovered History of the American West by Martha A. Sandweiss (Princeton University Press)

Three finalists will be announced later this month, with the winner to be named at a ceremony in Montreal on Oct. 30.