MONTREAL – Six authors have made the short list for the lucrative Cundill Prize in Historical Literature at McGill, including a former winner.

Yale University history professor Stuart B. Schwartz, who won the prize in 2008, is on the short list again with “Sea of Storms: A History of Hurricanes in the Greater Caribbean from Columbus to Katrina” (Princeton University Press).

Other finalists for the prize, worth US$75,000, include Harvard University history professor Sven Beckert for “Empire of Cotton: A Global History” (Alfred A. Knopf).

Columbia University history professor Susan Pedersen is on the list with “The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire” (Oxford University Press).

Claudio Saunt, history professor at Franklin College in Indiana, made the cut with “West of the Revolution: An Uncommon History of 1776” (W. W. Norton & Company).

Bettina Stangneth, an independent philosopher who lives in Hamburg, is a contender with “Eichmann before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer” (Bodley Head).

And Nikolaus Wachsmann, history professor at Birkbeck College in London, is on the list with “KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps” (Little, Brown Book Group).

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

It also awards two “Recognition of Excellence” prizes of US$10,000 each.

The Cundill Prize winner will be announced on Nov. 2.