Five books on foreign affairs make shortlist for $15,000 Gelber Prize

TORONTO – Five books on foreign affairs have made the short list for the $15,000 Lionel Gelber Prize.

They include: “Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956” by journalist Anne Applebaum; “The Second Nuclear Age: Strategy, Danger, and the New Power Politics” by Paul Bracken; “Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else” by Chrystia Freeland; “Ghosts of Empire: Britain’s Legacies in the Modern World” by Kwasi Kwarteng and “From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia” by Pankaj Mishra.

The Lionel Gelber Prize celebrates the world’s best non-fiction book in English on foreign affairs and international issues.

Jury chair William Thorsell said this year’s selections “offer fresh perspectives from the past that bring deeper understanding of current global issues and compelling perspectives on the future.”

Thorsell is joined on the jury by Walter Russell Mead and Margaret Wente, as well as Daniel W. Drezner and Gaynor Lilian Johnson.

The prize was founded in 1989 in memory of Canadian diplomat Lionel Gelber.

The award is presented annually by The Lionel Gelber Foundation, in partnership with Foreign Policy magazine and the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs.