The History Books

It is no easy thing to run a global book prize from Canada, far from the great publishing empires and the kingmakers of literary fashion, but the Cundill History Prize works at it. Funded by the bequest of a Montreal investor and mostly administered through McGill University, the Cundill seeks recognition by spending a lot — $75,000 (U.S.) to each year’s winner, plus $10,000 to each of the runners‑up — and by going global to a degree rivalled only by the Booker Prize. The Cundill aims to identify the best histories published in English, and mostly it looks abroad to do that. A prominent Canadian (Jeffrey Simpson, Charlotte Gray) or near-Canadian (David Frum) often joins the jury, but the panels are dominated by international scholars and critics, while authors from Ivy League schools and their European counterparts are strongly represented on the short lists. In a dozen years of Cundill finalists, I find only a single book on a Canadian topic: David Hackett Fischer’s...