Best history books this year according to experts
Administered by McGill University in Montreal, the Cundill History Prize is one of the most prestigious history awards. According to
Antonia Maioni, Dean of the Faculty of Arts at McGill University, “The function of the Cundill History Prize to champion the world’s best history writing as a way to better understand the present and to start mapping a future is perhaps more important than ever right now.”
This year the jury for the award consists of Anne Applebaum, Lyse Doucet, Eliga Gould and Sujit Sivasundaram chaired by Peter Frankopan
Announcing the list, Peter Frankopan said, “2020 has been a year of profound change — in so many ways, not just the pandemic — and studying and reading about the past helps us remember the people, the places, the times, for good and for bad, when history has changed, in individual countries, in regions, in continents, and globally. There is a real resonance in the books that we have chosen.”
He had earlier said, “This has been an extraordinary year for history writing, with some truly exceptional books that have changed how we look at the past. As we’ve all been learning during lockdown, making sense of the world around us has never been more important. I’m very excited by the outstanding panel that have agreed to judge the Cundill Prize this year – and to working with them to find the voices and ideas that have shown again why the study of history is so important.”
Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation by Roderick Beaton
Most history books write about Ancient Greece and the evolution of the civilisation that existed thousands of years ago. This book delves into more recent history- Greece in the past 300 years. It explores how Greece became a modern nation and the evolution of it's national identity.
Photo: cundillprize.com
Tacky’s Revolt: the Story of an Atlantic Slave War by Vincent Brown
This book explores the relationship between European, African, and American history. Though it touches on the time before as well, it starts at about the second half of the 18th century and goes on to the wars of terror today, exploring the rich history and bloody interactions of the cultures.
Photo: cundillprize.com
The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company by William Dalrymple
This book tells us of the East India Company, that used a private army to conquer India. It explores both the business and colonial goals of the company and how it managed to conquer India which was much bigger than the country the company originated from.
Photo: cundillprize.com
India in the Persianate Age: 1000-1765 by Richard M. Eaton
India has always had trade ties with the middle east and the rest of Asia and this book explores how one culture in particular influenced us in such a way that it's now a part of what's essentially considered India. We see the interaction between India and Persia and how that interaction, the Sultanate, the Mughals etc, shaped our culture to what it is today
Photo: cundillprize.com
Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Rivalry that Unravelled the Middle East by Kim Ghattas
Kim Ghattas is an Emmy-award winning journalist and writer who covered the Middle East for twenty years for the BBC and the Financial Times. Her book explores what she believes led to the bad blood between the Middle East and the West.
Photo: cundillprize.com
Black Radical: the Life and Times of William Monroe Trotter by Kerri Greenidge
As the title indicates, this book tells the tale of William Monroe Trotter. He was a journalist and an emancipator, who edited and published the Guardian, a weekly Boston newspaper that was read across the US. He lived from 1872–1934 and his advocacy for Black liberation was just before the time of Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr.
Photo: cundillprize.com
The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: a History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 by Rashid Khalidi
The book is written by the great-great-nephew of Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, mayor of Jerusalem in 1899. Using family material and other resources, he writes on a century of colonial war on the Palestinians, starting from the one by the Zionist movement and then Israel, but backed by Britain and the United States until the great powers of the age.
Photo: cundillprize.com
Providence Lost: the Rise and Fall of Cromwell’s Protectorate by Paul Lay
Set in Britain in the 1650's we follow Oliver Cromwell as he gains power and is named the 'Lord Protector'. We follow his life and strong political decisions written not as history but in an entertaining style. With the popularity of Mantel's Cromwell series and A Song of Ice and Fire, this non fiction might even intruige fiction lovers.
Photo: cundillprize.com
Unworthy Republic: the Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory by Claudio Saunt
This book tells of the "Indian Removal,” when Native Americans were forced to migrate across the Mississippi River in the 1830s as their land was stolen from them. We follow how this expulsion trend continues across America and we see how thousands of Native Americans died and thousands of others lost their possessions and homelands due the barbaric fraud, intimidation, and violence of the colonisers and
how the consequences of such cruelty still resonate today.
Photo: cundillprize.com
Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs by Camilla Townsend
Most history is written from the European/colonial point of view but this book has rare accounts from Native Americans of the Aztec kingdom. Some had used the Roman Script to write in their own language- Nahuatl and using those sources, the author has written a book on their history, up until now.
Photo: cundillprize.com
Start a Conversation
Post comment