Building Worlds

Recently, Paul Krugman, the Nobel laureate and New York Times opinion writer, took a break from questions of global trade and inflation and devoted one of his columns to Denis Villeneuve’s film Dune. It was not just that he loved the movie; he identified with its project. “Good science fiction involves building imaginary worlds that are different from the world we know,” he wrote, “but in interesting ways that relate to the attempt to understand why society is the way it is.” In numerous other columns, Krugman has shown how economists and social scientists do the same thing.

Of course, historians can be world builders too, as they recreate and interpret past societies in interesting ways. Based at McGill University, the Cundill History Prize has been given annually since 2008 to honour the ones who do that type of work best — with big, serious histories written in English. Out of some 300 titles, the international jury for this year’s prize narrowed...