Books about Pierre Trudeau, John A. MacDonald and the pine beetle epidemic have made the short list for the $25,000 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing.
The winner of the award, administered by the Writers' Trust of Canada, will be named on April 25 at the annual Politics and the Pen gala in Ottawa.
The finalists are:
Ron Graham for The Last Act: Pierre Trudeau, the Gang of Eight, and the Fight for Canada (Allen Lane Canada);
Richard Gwyn for Nation Maker: Sir John A. Macdonald: His Life, Our Times; Volume Two: 1867-1891 (Random House Canada);
Max and Monique Nemni (authors), George Tombs (translator) for Trudeau Transformed: The Shaping of a Statesman, 1944-1965 (McClelland & Stewart);
Andrew Nikiforuk for Empire of the Beetle: How Human Folly and a Tiny Bug Are Killing North America's Great Forests (Greystone Books/David Suzuki Foundation);
Jacques Poitras for Imaginary Line: Life on an Unfinished Border, published by Goose Lane Editions.
This year's prize jury is journalist David Akin, historian Charlotte Gray and political scientist Janice Gross Stein.
Named after a popular member of parliament from Windsor, Ont., the prize – in its 12th year – is given to a non-fiction book about a political subject of interest to Canadian readers.
Nominated authors receive $2,500.
