Mary Fulbrook, Jill Lepore, and Julia Lovell

Three finalists were announced for the Cundill History Prize at Massey College in Toronto on Oct. 16. The prize, administered by McGill University, recognizes the best English-language history writing. The nearly $100,000 prize ($75,000 US) is the largest English-language non-fiction writing prize in the world.

The finalists include Mary Fulbrook’s Reckonings: Legacies of Nazi Persecution and the Quest for Justice (Oxford University Press), Jill Lepore’s These Truths: A History of the United States (W. W. Norton & Company), and Julia Lovell’s Maoism: A Global History (The Bodley Head/Knopf). This is the first time in the prize’s 12-year history that the shortlist has been comprised entirely of female authors.

Both runner-ups will receive about $13,000 ($10,000 US) when the winning book is announced at a gala at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts on November 14. The winner will be chosen by a jury that includes historian Alan Taylor, Harvard professor Jane Kamensky, University College Dublin professor Robert Gerwarth, Canadian author Charlotte Gray, and the director of Oxford University’s China Centre Rana Mitter.