Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction

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Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction

1kidzdoc
Edited: Nov 17, 2017, 6:05 am

The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction aims to reward the best of non-fiction and is open to authors of any nationality. It covers all non-fiction in the areas of current affairs, history, politics, science, sport, travel, biography, autobiography and the arts.

Formerly known as The Samuel Johnson Prize (1999 – 2015) it is the most prestigious non-fiction prize in the UK, worth £30,000 to the winner.

This year's winner is How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS by David France. This book was chosen for this year's Wellcome Book Prize earlier this year, so I'll read it sometime in 2018.

This year's longlist:
Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine by Anne Applebaum
The Islamic Enlightenment: The Modern Struggle Between Faith and Reason by Christopher de Bellaigue
Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge
How to Survive a Plague by David France
Plot 29 by Allan Jenkins
Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe by Kapka Kassabova
I Was Told to Come Alone: My Journey Behind The Lines of Jihad by Souad Mekhennet
An Odyssey: A Father, a Son and An Epic by Daniel Mendelsohn
A Bold and Dangerous Family: The Rosselis and the Fight Against Mussolini by Caroline Moorehead
To Be A Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death by Mark O’Connell
Belonging: The Story of The Jews by Simon Schama
Mr Lear: A Life of Art and Nonsense by Jenny Uglow

This year's shortlist:
The Islamic Enlightenment: The Modern Struggle Between Faith and Reason by Christopher de Bellaigue
How to Survive A Plague by David France
Border: A Journey to The Edge of Europe by Kapka Kassabova
An Odyssey: A Father, A Son and An Epic by Daniel Mendelsohn
To Be A Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death by Mark O’Connell
Belonging: the Story of the Jews, 1492-1900 by Simon Schama

2auntmarge64
Nov 17, 2017, 8:17 pm

So, I've read only one of these books and I'm rooting for it: An Odyssey: A Father, A Son and An Epic by Daniel Mendelsohn. A wonderful book.

3bergs47
Oct 4, 2018, 10:08 am

The shortlist for the £30,000 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, which celebrates the best in non-fiction writing, is announced Oct 2

The six titles on this year’s shortlist are:

Hello World: How to be Human in The Age of The Machine, Hannah Fry
The Spy and the Traitor, Ben Macintyre
Amateur: A True Story About What Makes a Man, Thomas Page McBee
Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age, Stephen R Platt
Chernobyl: History of A Tragedy, Serhii Plokhy
She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers, Perversions and Potential of Heredity, Carl Zimmer

The winner of the 2018 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction will be announced on Wednesday 14 November

5bergs47
Dec 29, 2020, 9:02 am

The 2020 shortlist is:
• One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time by Craig Brown
• The Idea of the Brain: A History by Matthew Cobb
• Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture by Sudhir Hazareesingh
• Our Bodies, Their Battlefield: What War Does to Women by Christina Lamb
• Stranger in the Shogun's City: A Woman’s Life in Nineteenth-Century Japan by Amy Stanley
• The Haunting of Alma Fielding: A True Ghost Story by Kate Summerscale

The winner of the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize of Non-Fiction is Craig Brown for One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time