Michael Harris's controversial anti-Harper biography Party of One is probably the newsiest title on the list. David Halton's Dispatches from the Front, about his father the CBC war correspondent Matthew Halton, is the most strictly historical, though Armand Garnet Ruffo's art-historical Norval Morriseau: Man Changing into Thunderbird is in there too. See the full lists here.
The French language nonfiction list takes more note of history with a big botanical history, two different books on women writers in Quebec history,and a biography of journalist-politician Honoré Beaugrand. And Roch Carrier's Montcalm and Wolfe earned a nom for Donald Winkler who translated it into English.
Meanwhile Rosemary Sullivan's biography Stalin's Daughter took the big-dollar Hilary Weston nonfiction prize last night. I was once on a jury that gave Sullivan a GG, so I can believe it's a good book.
