The shortlist has been selected for the $75,000 2026 Cundill History Prize, honoring the best in history writing in English and administered by McGill University.
The shortlist:
The Fallen: The Magdalene Laundries and Ireland's Legacy of Silence by Louise Brangan (Bodley Head)
Korean Messiah: Kim Il Sung and the Christian Roots of North Korea's Personality Cult by Jonathan Cheng (Knopf)
Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia by Sam Dalrymple (William Collins)
Stealing America: The Hidden Story of Indigenous Slavery in U.S. History by Linford D. Fisher (Liveright)
Vanilla: The History of an Extraordinary Bean by Eric T. Jennings (Yale University Press)
The First Ghetto: Venice and the Jews by Alexander Lee (Picador)
We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution by Jill Lepore (Liveright/John Murray Press)
John Doe Chinaman: A Forgotten History of Chinese Life Under American Racial Law by Beth Lew-Williams (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press)