Susan Pedersen takes US$75,000 Cundill Prize for Historical Literature

TORONTO – Columbia University history professor Susan Pedersen took the 2015 Cundill Prize in Historical Literature at McGill.

Pedersen, a Canadian citizen, won the US$75,000 grand prize Monday night at a gala in Toronto for “The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire” (Oxford University Press), described as “a riveting work of global history.”

There were two other finalists for this year’s prize: American historian Sven Beckert’s “Empire of Cotton: A Global History” (Alfred A. Knopf) and Hamburg-based philosopher Belinda Stangneth’s “Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer” (Bodley Head).

They were each awarded a “Recognition of Excellence” prize of US$10,000.

Now in its eighth year, the Cundill Prize is billed as “the world’s most lucrative international award for a non-fiction book.”