2023 WinnerTania Branigan -
Red Memory:
Living, Remembering and Forgetting China's Cultural Revolution
Living, Remembering and Forgetting China's Cultural Revolution
Biography
Tania Branigan is The Guardian foreign leader writer; she spent seven years as The Guardian's China correspondent. Her writing has also appeared in the Washington Post and the Australian. Red Memory is her first book.
As well as winning 2023's Cundill History Prize, Branigan was also shortlisted for The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2023 and The British Academy Prize for Non-Fiction 2023.
Book Summary
An indelible exploration of the Cultural Revolution and how it shapes China today, Tania Branigan's Red Memory uncovers forty years of silence through the rarely heard stories of individuals who lived through Mao's decade of madness.
FinalistJames Morton Turner -
Charged:
A History of Batteries and Lessons for a Clean Energy Future
A History of Batteries and Lessons for a Clean Energy Future
Biography
James Morton Turner is Professor of Environmental Studies at Wellesley College, Massachusetts. He is author of The Promise of Wilderness: American Environmental Politics Since 1964 and co-author of The Republican Reversal: Conservatives and the Environment from Nixon to Trump.
Book Summary
James Morton Turner unpacks the history of batteries to explore why solving “the battery problem” is critical to a clean energy transition in Charged. With new insight on the consequences for people and communities on the front lines, Turner draws on the past for crucial lessons that will help us build a just and clean energy future.
FinalistKate Cooper -
Queens of a Fallen World:
The Lost Women of Augustine's Confessions
The Lost Women of Augustine's Confessions
Biography
Kate Cooper is Professor of History at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her work explores the world of the Mediterranean in the Roman period, with a special interest in daily life and the family, religion, gender, and social identity, along with martyrdom, resistance movements, and religious violence
Book Summary
While many know of St Augustine and the Confessions, few know of the women whose hopes and dreams shaped his early life. Drawing upon their depictions in the Confessions, historian Kate Cooper skilfully reconstructs their lives against the backdrop of the late Roman Empire to paint a vivid portrait of the turbulent society they and Augustine moved through.
