Meet The Cundill Prize Finalists! Susan Pedersen

Susan Pedersen is Canadian (born in Japan to Canadian parents) and is a Columbia University Professor in the US. She is nominated for her book: THE GUARDIANS: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire (Oxford University Press).]

Susan Pedersen is Professor and James P. Shenton Professor of the Core Curriculum at Columbia University. She specializes in British history, the British Empire, comparative European history, and international history.

She has authored five non-fiction titles and has won the:

• Albion Book Prize of the North American Conference on British Studies (for Eleanor Rathbone and the Politics of Conscience) 
• Allan Sharlin Prize, Social Science History Association (for Family, Dependence and the Origins of the Welfare State)

BOOKS THAT SHE HAS AUTHORED:

• The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire
• Settler Colonialism in the Twentieth Century: Projects, Practices, Legacies
• Eleanor Rathbone and the Politics of Conscience
• After the Victorians: Private Conscience and Public Duty in Modern Britain
• Family, Dependence, and the Origins of the Welfare State: Britain and France, 1914-1945

DESCRIPTION OF NOMINATED BOOK

At the end of the First World War, the Paris Peace Conference saw a battle over the future of empire. The victorious allied powers wanted to annex the Ottoman territories and German colonies they had occupied; Woodrow Wilson and a groundswell of anti-imperialist activism stood in their way. France, Belgium, Japan and the British dominions reluctantly agreed to an Anglo-American proposal to hold and administer those allied conquests under "mandate" from the new League of Nations. In the end, fourteen mandated territories were set up across the Middle East, Africa and the Pacific. Against all odds, these disparate and far-flung territories became the site and the vehicle of global transformation.

In this masterful history of the mandates system, Susan Pedersen illuminates the role the League of Nations played in creating the modern world. Tracing the system from its creation in 1920 until its demise in 1939, Pedersen examines its workings from the realm of international diplomacy; the viewpoints of the League's experts and officials; and the arena of local struggles within the territories themselves. Featuring a cast of larger-than-life figures, including Lord Lugard, King Faisal, Chaim Weizmann and Ralph Bunche, the narrative sweeps across the globe-from windswept scrublands along the Orange River to famine-blighted hilltops in Rwanda to Damascus under French bombardment-but always returns to Switzerland and the sometimes vicious battles over ideas of civilization, independence, economic relations, and sovereignty in the Geneva headquarters. 

As Pedersen shows, although the architects and officials of the mandates system always sought to uphold imperial authority, colonial nationalists, German revisionists, African-American intellectuals and others were able to use the platform Geneva offered to challenge their claims. Amid this cacophony, imperial statesmen began exploring new means - client states, economic concessions - of securing Western hegemony. In the end, the mandate system helped to create the world in which we now live.A riveting work of global history, The Guardians enables us to look back at the League with new eyes, and in doing so, appreciate how complex, multivalent, and consequential this first great experiment in internationalism really was.

RBC Taylor Prize Winner Plum Johnson Stars at IFOA, October 27th. Toronto.

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Plum Johnson on TVO, March 2015

Plum Johnson, winner of the 2015 RBC Taylor Prize for her memoir They Left Us Everything will speak at the International Festival of Authors (IFOA) RBC Taylor Prize Spotlight. Joining her in a discussion about public, private and historical grief will be previous RBC Taylor Prize winner and juror Tim Cook and author Asne Seierstad. Journalist Bert Archermoderates.

What: RBC Taylor Prize Spotlight
When: Tuesday, October 27 at 7:30 pm
Where: Brigantine Room, York Quay Centre
Cost: $18/$15 for supporters

Earlier this year, Plum Johnson won the 2015 RBC Taylor Prize for They Left Us Everything: A Memoir, published by Penguin Canada. In their citation, the prize jury said:

Beautifully written with great warmth and wit, They Left Us Everything is an absorbing memoir of grief, growth, and decluttering. Plum Johnson must deal not merely with the legacy of her difficult, ill-matched parents, but is handed the burden of disposing of the seemingly endless contents of their 23-room Lake Ontario home, which becomes a character on its own in the telling. The task, which she initially thinks manageable, proves Herculean, far more complex than she'd imagined, involving understanding her past and packing up its contents, both literal and metaphorical…"

The RBC Taylor Prize is awarded annually to the author whose book best combines an excellent command of the English language, an elegance of style, quality of thought, and subtlety of perception. The Prize consists of $25,000 for the winning author and $2,000 for each of the runners up. All of the shortlisted titles receive extensive national publicity and marketing support. The trustees of the Charles Taylor Foundation are: Michael Bradley, Vijay Parmar, David Staines, Edward Taylor, Nadina Taylor, and Noreen Taylor.

The presenting sponsor of the RBC Taylor Prize is RBC Wealth Management; its media sponsors are The Globe and Mail (exclusive newspaper sponsor), CNW Group, The Huffington Post Canada, Maclean's, and Quill & Quire; its in-kind sponsors are Ben McNally Books, Event Source, IFOA, The Omni King Edward Hotel, and Toronto Public Library.

For further information: Media contact: Stephen Weir & Associates,Stephen Weir: 416-489-5868 | cell: 416-801-3101 | sweir5492@rogers.com; Visit our website at www.rbctaylorprize.ca

Empire of Cotton author Sven Beckert nominated for Cundill Prize!

Meet the Cundill Prize finalists! Sven Beckert is nominated for his book Empire of Cotton. He is the winner of the BANCROFT PRIZE and is a PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST. 

Sven Beckert

Sven Beckert is the Laird Bell Professor of American History at Harvard University. Holding a PhD from Columbia University, he has written widely on the economic, social, and political history of capitalism. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including from Harvard Business School, the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History. 

He was also a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The Cundill Prize is the richest award for non-fiction writing in the world.  The Prize, administered by McGill University

accepts books published in English – or translated to English – in the area of history.  This year the Prize received 159 titles from publishers around the globe. In addition to the Grand Prize of $75,000 US, two “Recognition of Excellence” awards of $10,000 U.S. each are granted to the runners-up.  

The Grand Prize winner of the 2015 Cundill Prize will be announced at a gala awards ceremony in Toronto on Monday, November 2, at the Shangri-La Hotel. Famed Canadian author (The Massey Murder; Gold Diggers, Striking It Rich in the Klondike) and speaker Charlotte Gray will host.   

Red Bull parachutist drops in to Toronto's Science Centre

High Flying Celeb, Felix Baumgartner, opens new exhibition 

Austrian parachutist Felix Baumgarter dropped into the Ontario Science Centre yesterday in a very ho-hum way - through the front door. Not known for pedestrian entrances, the Austrian daredevil let an exciting new exhibition do all his talking at a media launch yesterday.
With a passion for expanding boundaries, especially in the air, Red Bull Stratos pilot Felix Baumgartner is an expert parachutist best known for jumping from a high altitude balloon at the edge of the earth’s atmosphere three years ago.

Photo by George Socka - Beach Digital

Wearing only a spacesuit, and 10 minutes of oxygen on his back, Baumgartner stepped out from the balloon’s capsule and accelerated to Mach 1.25 in just 50 seconds before parachuting to the ground. His mission set records and also delivered valuable scientific data, serving to further the progress of aerospace safety, including the development of protocols for exposure to high altitude and supersonic acceleration and deceleration.
The story of his accomplishment is part of a new exhibition at the Science Centre. The Red Bull Stratos exhibit opened yesterday and closes January 11, 2016.
Felix, born April 20, 1969, grew up in Salzburg, Austria where he dreamed of skydiving and flying helicopters and was inspired by astronauts on TV. He made his first skydive at age 16. Eager to test the limits, Felix set a record for history's lowest BASE jump (from Rio de Janeiro's Christ the Redeemer statue), twice set world records for the highest BASE jump from a building (Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur and Taipei 101 tower), and even landed his canopy inside a cave in Croatia. He is also famous for completing an unprecedented freefall flight across the English Channel using a carbon wing!
Photographer George Socka took this picture of Art Thompson (left) and Felix Baumgartner.  They are standing in front of the Red Bull Stratos capsule at the Science Centre. Thompson was the technical project director on the expedition and Felix Baumgartner, the pilot and parachutist.

George Socka reported on Baugarter's appearance in Toronto at the Ontario Science Centre in this YouTube clip
https://youtu.be/2WOqCHejpoc

Day before John Lennon's Birthday, new book is launched by Ritchie Yorke

Ritchie taking notes for the Globe and Mail beside John Lennon

Book Cover

RITCHIE YORKE’S TRUE STORY OF JOHN AND YOKO’s CANADIAN PEACE MOVEMENT IS ABOUT TO BE PUBLISHED - MEET/INTERVIEW THE AUTHOR RITCHIE YORKE 

All We Are Saying Is Give Peace A Chance

Lennon Peace Campaign To Be celebrated

At Ritchie Yorke's Book Launch

Toronto Oct. 8, 2015 – The Lennon Peace anthem crafted in a one week bed-in in Montreal in 1969 resonates today as it did then.  Rock journalist and activist Ritchie Yorke has detailed his recollections of that week andThe Toronto Varsity Rock Concert.  John meeting Trudeau. And his Traveling the World For Peace with Ronnie Hawkins in his new book  to be launched in Toronto Oct. 8 two days before Lennon’s 75 birthday.

CHRIST YOU KNOW IT AIN'T EASY: JOHN AND YOKO'S BATTLE FOR PEACE

“I was intimately involved with Lennon in the amazing launch of the campaign, convinced as we were about the power of music to change the world. Lennon’s powerful appeal for peace with the current bombing, fighting and killing in the Middle East is as needed today as it was during the Vietnam war,” Yorke says. 

The celebration will feature invitees singing the peace anthem, rare never before seen photos of John Yoko at the bed-in and subsequent events, and a band playing Beatle music.

October 8 WHEN - – Media Availability and peace song 6:45 pm

Place - 3030 Dundas St. West

Celebration starts at 8:00 pm

The new CHRIST YOU KNOW IT AIN'T EASY: JOHN AND YOKO'S BATTLE FOR PEACE is available on Kobo, iBooks, Amazon, Barnes and Nobles And Goggle. In print: Burnstown Publishing.

While in Toronto, Yorke and his wife Minnie Cherry have also rereleased his books about Led Zeppelin, Van Morrison and the early Canadian Rock and Roll scene. All titles are available on Kobo and at Ritchie Yorke’s websitehttp://ritchieyorke.com

 Ritchie at left taking notes! Needs a cutline!

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For interviews, photographs and review copies. Please contact:

Stephen Weir

Stephen Weir & Associates

416-489-5868

stephen@stephenweir.com

@sweirsweir

Stephen Weir & Associates | stephen@stephenweir.com 109 Castlefield Avenue, Toronto, ON CANADA. M4R 1G5Tel: 416-489-5868 | cell: 416-801-3101  twitter: sweirsweir