The Cundill Prize, the megabucks international history prize administered by McGill University, seems to be finding its feet. Covering all the histories written in the world (well, in English anyway) must be near-impossible, but this year's look like an impressive list. This year includes a couple of books of some Canadian interest -- The Civil War of 1812 by Alan Taylor and Liberty's Exiles by Maya Jasanoff -- plus Timothy Snyder's holocaust studies tour de force Bloodlands, and lesser known but still intriguing titles on Italian sainthood, Haitian slavery, and Renaissance identities. History is a big room. Full list here.
I actually read last year's Cundill winner, Diamaid MacCulloch's Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, and it was a worthy winner. If you feel the need to engage with a terrific historian really on top of a big subject, you could do worse.
