The 2024 Cundill History Prize

The Cundill History Prize is an annual Canadian book prize for “the best history writing in English.” Established in 2008, the prize is the largest prize awarded to non-fiction literary work. The prize works on “encouraging informed public debate through the wider dissemination of history writing to new audiences around the world.” An award of US$75,000 is given annually to the winning title, and two US$10,000 prizes are awarded to the two runners-up.

The winner of the 2024 Cundill History Prize is Native Nations: A Millennium in North America by Kathleen DuVal. The two runners-up are Judgement at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia by Gary J. Bassand Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights by Dylan C. Penningroth.

Here are some titles from the 2024 shortlist:

Long before the colonization of North America, Indigenous Americans built diverse civilizations and adapted to a changing world in ways that reverberated globally. And, as award-winning historian Kathleen DuVal vividly recounts, when Europeans did arrive, no civilization came to a halt because of a few wandering explorers, even when the strangers came well armed.

A millennium ago, North American cities rivaled urban centers around the world in size. Then, following a period of climate change and instability, numerous smaller nations emerged, moving away from rather than toward urbanization. From this urban past, egalitarian government structures, diplomacy, and complex economies spread across North America. So, when Europeans showed up in the sixteenth century, they encountered societies they did not understand—those having developed differently from their own—and whose power they often underestimated.

For centuries afterward, Indigenous people maintained an upper hand and used Europeans in pursuit of their own interests. In Native Nations, we see how Mohawks closely controlled trade with the Dutch—and influenced global markets—and how Quapaws manipulated French colonists. Power dynamics shifted after the American Revolution, but Indigenous people continued to command much of the continent’s land and resources. Shawnee brothers Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa forged new alliances and encouraged a controversial new definition of Native identity to attempt to wall off U.S. ambitions. The Cherokees created institutions to assert their sovereignty on the global stage, and the Kiowas used their power in the west to regulate the passage of white settlers across their territory.

In this important addition to the growing tradition of North American history centered on Indigenous nations, Kathleen DuVal shows how the definitions of power and means of exerting it shifted over time, but the sovereignty and influence of Native peoples remained a constant—and will continue far into the future.

In the weeks after Japan finally surrendered to the Allies to end World War II, the world turned to the question of how to move on from years of carnage and destruction. For Harry Truman, Douglas MacArthur, Chiang Kai-shek, and their fellow victors, the question of justice seemed clear: Japan’s militaristic leaders needed to be tried and punished for the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor; shocking atrocities against civilians in China, the Philippines, and elsewhere; and rampant abuses of prisoners of war in notorious incidents such as the Bataan death march. For the Allied powers, the trial was an opportunity to render judgment on their vanquished foes, but also to create a legal framework to prosecute war crimes and prohibit the use of aggressive war, building a more peaceful world under international law and American hegemony. For the Japanese leaders on trial, it was their chance to argue that their war had been waged to liberate Asia from Western imperialism and that the court was victors’ justice.

For more than two years, lawyers for both sides presented their cases before a panel of clashing judges from China, India, the Philippines, and Australia, as well as the United States and European powers. The testimony ran from horrific accounts of brutality and the secret plans to attack Pearl Harbor to the Japanese military’s threats to subvert the government if it sued for peace. Yet rather than clarity and unanimity, the trial brought complexity, dissents, and divisions that provoke international discord between China, Japan, and Korea to this day. Those courtroom tensions and contradictions could also be seen playing out across Asia as the trial unfolded in the crucial early years of the Cold War, from China’s descent into civil war to Japan’s successful postwar democratic elections to India’s independence and partition.

From the author of the acclaimed The Blood Telegram, which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, this magnificent history is the product of a decade of research and writing. Judgment at Tokyo is a riveting story of wartime action, dramatic courtroom battles, and the epic formative years that set the stage for the Asian postwar era.

The familiar story of civil rights goes like this: once, America’s legal system shut Black people out and refused to recognize their rights, their basic human dignity, or even their very lives. When lynch mobs gathered, police and judges often closed their eyes, if they didn’t join in. For Black people, law was a hostile, fearsome power to be avoided whenever possible. Then, starting in the 1940s, a few brave lawyers ventured south, bent on changing the law. Soon, ordinary African Americans, awakened by Supreme Court victories and galvanized by racial justice activists, launched the civil rights movement.

In Before the Movement, acclaimed historian Dylan C. Penningroth brilliantly revises the conventional story. Drawing on long-forgotten sources found in the basements of county courthouses across the nation, Penningroth reveals that African Americans, far from being ignorant about law until the middle of the twentieth century, have thought about, talked about, and used it going as far back as even the era of slavery. They dealt constantly with the laws of property, contract, inheritance, marriage and divorce, of associations (like churches and businesses and activist groups), and more. By exercising these “rights of everyday use,” Penningroth demonstrates, they made Black rights seem unremarkable. And in innumerable subtle ways, they helped shape the law itself—the laws all of us live under today.

Penningroth’s narrative, which stretches from the last decades of slavery to the 1970s, partly traces the history of his own family. Challenging accepted understandings of Black history framed by relations with white people, he puts Black people at the center of the story—their loves and anger and loneliness, their efforts to stay afloat, their mistakes and embarrassments, their fights, their ideas, their hopes and disappointments, in all their messy humanness. Before the Movement is an account of Black legal lives that looks beyond the Constitution and the criminal justice system to recover a rich, broader vision of Black life—a vision allied with, yet distinct from, “the freedom struggle.”

A spellbinding work of history that reads like a Cold War spy thriller–about the U.S.-sanctioned plot to assassinate the democratically elected leader of the newly independent Congo. It was supposed to be a moment of great optimism, a cause for jubilation. The Congo was at last being set free from Belgium–one of seventeen countries to gain independence in 1960 from ruling European powers. At the helm as prime minister was charismatic nationalist Patrice Lumumba. Just days after the handover, however, the Congo’s new army mutinied, Belgian forces intervened, and Lumumba turned to the United Nations for help in saving his newborn nation from what the press was already calling “the Congo crisis.” Dag Hammarskjöld, the tidy Swede serving as UN secretary-general, quickly arranged the organization’s biggest peacekeeping mission in history. But chaos was still spreading. Frustrated with the fecklessness of the UN and spurned by the United States, Lumumba then approached the Soviets for help–an appeal that set off alarm bells at the CIA. To forestall the spread of Communism in Africa, the CIA sent word to its station chief in the Congo, Larry Devlin : Lumumba had to go. Within a year, everything would unravel. The CIA plot to murder Lumumba would fizzle out, but he would be deposed in a CIA-backed coup, transferred to enemy territory in a CIA-approved operation, and shot dead by Congolese assassins. Hammarskjöld, too, would die, in a mysterious plane crash en route to negotiate a cease-fire with the Congo’s rebellious southeast. And a young, ambitious military officer named Joseph Mobutu, who had once sworn fealty to Lumumba, would seize power with U.S. help and misrule the country for more than three decades. For the Congolese people, the events of 1960-61 represented the opening chapter of a long horror story. For the U.S. government, however, they provided a playbook for future interventions.

You can read more about the winner here, the three finalists here, the full shortlist here, and the longlist here.

For more information, visit the Cundill History Prize website.

Artificial Intelligence – Redpath Book Display, September 2024

Everywhere you look today, you will see signs of artificial intelligence (AI) all around you — from the apps on your phone to the algorithms behind the scenes. While AI might feel like a recent phenomenon, its roots trace back to the 1950s—making it older than Tim Hortons!

What’s changed is the surge of new AI tools now available to the public, transforming how we interact with technology. That is why you are hearing more and more about AI every day.

Below, you will find a few recommended reads from our Redpath Book Display for the month of September highlighting the topic of “Artificial Intelligence”. Have a good read!

A concise but informative overview of AI ethics and policy. Artificial intelligence, or AI for short, has generated a staggering amount of hype in the past several years. Authored by experts in fields ranging from computer science and law to philosophy and cognitive science, this book offers a concise overview of moral, political, legal and economic implications of AI. It covers the basics of AI’s latest permutation, machine learning, and considers issues such as transparency, bias, liability, privacy, and regulation. Both business and government have integrated algorithmic decision support systems into their daily operations, and the book explores the implications for our lives as citizens.


Groundbreaking narrative on the urgency of ethically designed AI and a guidebook to reimagining life in the era of intelligent technology A Human Algorithm: How Artificial Intelligence Is Redefining Who We Are examines the immense impact intelligent technology will have on humanity. These machines, while challenging our personal beliefs and our socio-economic world order, also have the potential to transform our health and well-being, alleviate poverty and suffering, and reveal the mysteries of intelligence and consciousness. International human rights attorney Flynn Coleman deftly argues that it is critical we instill values, ethics, and morals into our robots, algorithms, and other forms of AI. Equally important, we need to develop and implement laws, policies, and oversight mechanisms to protect us from tech’s insidious threats. To realize AI’s transcendent potential, Coleman advocates for inviting a diverse group of voices to participate in designing our intelligent machines and using our moral imagination to ensure that human rights, empathy, and equity are core principles of emerging technologies. Ultimately, A Human Algorithm is a clarion call for building a more humane future and moving conscientiously into a new frontier of our own design.


The United States has long been the leader in Artificial Intelligence. But Dr. Kai-Fu Lee–one of the world’s most respected experts on AI–reveals that China has caught up to the US at an astonishingly rapid pace. As Sino-American competition in AI heats up, Lee envisions China and the US forming a powerful duopoly in AI. He outlines the upheaval of traditional jobs, how the suddenly unemployed will find new ways of making their lives meaningful, and how the Chinese and American governments will have to cope with the changing economic landscape.


How will AI evolve and what major innovations are on the horizon? What will its impact be on the job market, economy, and society? What is the path toward human-level machine intelligence? What should we be concerned about as artificial intelligence advances? Architects of Intelligence contains a series of in-depth, one-to-one interviews where New York Times bestselling author, Martin Ford, uncovers the truth behind these questions from some of the brightest minds in the Artificial Intelligence community. Martin has wide-ranging conversations with twenty-three of the world’s foremost researchers and entrepreneurs working in AI and robotics.


Addressing major issues in the design of intelligent machines, such as consciousness and environment, and covering everything from the influential groundwork of Alan Turing to the cutting-edge robots of today, Introducing Artificial Intelligence is a uniquely accessible illustrated introduction to this fascinating area of science.

Enduring Conflict: Children’s Stories of War and Survival – a Redpath Book Display

Children have long been the innocent victims of war, enduring unimaginable suffering and loss. Therefore, The Redpath Book Display for August is on the theme of “Children and War.” The Humanities and Social Sciences Library has put together a thoughtful collection that highlights the voices of these children through literature, history, and personal accounts. These books and films highlight children’s lives who have been afflicted by armed conflicts since WWII.

A photo of the Redpath Book Display

Here are some notable titles from the display:

  1. “Gaza Writes Back: Short Stories from Young Writers in Gaza, Palestine” by Refaat Alareer: This collection features short stories from young Palestinian writers in Gaza, who share their experiences of life under occupation and conflict. Their stories highlight resilience, fear, and hope amidst war (2008-2009), offering personal glimpses into a region often depicted only through politics and violence.
  2. “The Drone Eats with Me: Diaries from a City Under Fire” by Atef Abu Saif: Abu Saif’s powerful diary details life in Gaza during Israel’s 2014 military offensive. Saif’s narrative is raw and vivid, detailing the daily struggle to survive amidst the constant presence of drones and bombings.
  3. “Beasts of No Nation” by Uzodinma Iweala: Agu, a young boy in an unnamed West African nation, is recruited into a unit of guerrilla fighters as civil war engulfs his country. Haunted by his father’s own death at the hands of militants, which he fled just before witnessing, Agu is vulnerable to the dangerous yet paternal nature of his new commander.
  4. “The Breadwinner” by Deborah Ellis: Young Parvana lives with her family in one room of a bombed-out apartment building in Kabul, Afghanistan. Because he has a foreign education, her father is arrested by the Taliban.
  5. “War Brothers” by Sharon E. McKay: This graphic novel provides a harrowing look at child soldiers in Uganda. It follows the lives of boys abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army and their desperate journey to escape, offering a deep and empathetic portrayal of their struggles.
  6. “To the Starry Island” by Park Kwang-su: Moon Chae-Ku and his friend Kim Chul try to bring the body of Moon’s father back to his native Kwisong Island for burial. Their ferry is intercepted by resentful islanders who will not let the boat dock, because of the father’s political activities during the Korean War.
  7. “Children’s Rights and International Development: lessons and challenges from the field” This collection of essays, edited by Myriam Denov (Professor & Canada Research Chair at McGill; Director of Global Child McGill), Richard Maclure, and Kathryn Campbell, combines accounts of the experiences and perspectives of marginalized children in ten developing countries with critical assessments of current child rights policies and strategies of intervention.

This collection at the Redpath Library is a reflection on the resilience and bravery of children facing the horrors of war. These stories provide insight into the psychological, emotional, and physical toll of conflict on children, offering readers a way to connect with history and current global issues through the eyes of its youngest victims. Visit the Redpath Library display to explore these in addition to other impactful works.