The World's BEST History Authors in Toronto at IFOA and the Cundill Prize. This Weekend and Monday

 

The World’s Best History Authors Together On Stage

Cundill Prize Finalists to Speak At IFOA Saturday Afternoon!

October 25, 2015  The three finalists for the world’s richest non-fiction book prize – the Cundill – will be on stage together this Saturday afternoon as part of the International Festival of Authors in Toronto.  They will join moderator McGill professor of History, Gil Troy, at 3pm on October 31^st at Harbourfront’s Studio Theatre.

The three finalists appearing are:

•   Sven Beckert – Empire of Cotton: A Global History (Alfred A. Knopf)

•   Susan Pedersen – The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire (Oxford University Press)

•   Bettina Stangneth – Eichmann before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer (Bodley Head)            

Harvard Professor Sven Beckert researches and teaches the history of the United States in the nineteenth century, with a particular emphasis on the history of capitalism, including its economic, social, political and transnational dimensions. The Cundill Prize nominated Empire of Cotton: A Global History, is the first global history of the nineteenth century’s most important commodity. The book won the Bancroft Award, The Philip Taft Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Columbia Professor Susan Pedersen specializes in British history, the British Empire, comparative European history, and international history.  Her nominated book is The Guardians:  The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire and details the League of Nations and its impact on the imperial order. Dr. Pedersen is the lone Canadian in the running for the Cundill Prize.  She was born in Japan (her parents were Canadian missionaries) and has retained her Canadian citizenship.

German philosopher Bettina Strangneth has written a book that debunks the myth that Adolf Eichmann was a banal stooge for Hitler.  Her book Eichmann before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer has been translated into English and has been hailed as the most important historical book about  Eichmann in this century.

Moderator Gil Troy is the author of The Age of Clinton: America in the 1990s, published by Thomas Dunne Books. He is a Professor of History at McGill University and a Visiting Scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington. He writes a regular column in The Daily Beast and The Jerusalem Post.

 The Cundill Prize in Historical Literature at McGill (Cundill Prize) was established in 2008 to recognize and promote literary and academic achievement in history. The award is offered each year by McGill University to an individual, of any nationality and from any country, who has published a book determined to have had (or likely to have) a profound literary, social and academic impact in the area of history.

Saturday, October 31, 2015 - 3:00 PM

Author appearance, Round table, Special Event: IFOA

Studio Theatre

235 Queens Quay West

Toronto M5J 2G8

Cost: $18/$15 for supporters/FREE for students & youth

Tickets can be purchased online: https://my.harbourfrontcentre.com/single/SelectSeating.aspx?p=26117, over the phone (416 973 4000) or in person at 235 Queens Quay West.

Bettina Stangneth (top), Sven Beckert (left) and Susan Pedersen (right)

Media Contacts:

 TORONTO:

Stephen Weir & Associates

Stephen@stephenweir.com

416-801-3101 416-489-5868

For more information on the Cundill Prize: www.cundillprize.com

Follow us on Twitter: @CundillPrize

    

Bettina Stangneth (top), Sven Beckert (left) and Susan Pedersen (right)

The Age of Clinton: America in the 1990s Gil Troy in Toronto next weekend.

MEDIA ALERT - INTERVIEW OPPORTUNITY - THE AGE OF CLINTON - GIL TROY

 

October 26, 2015  McGill professor of History Gil Troy will be in Toronto and available for interviews on Saturday October 31 and Sunday November 1 as he will be moderating an afternoon event at the International Festival of Authors (IFOA).  Prof. Troy has just published a book, The Age of Clinton: America in the 1990s.

Prof. Troy will be moderating a panel of the Cundill Prize in Historical Literature finalists at the IFOA on Saturday, October 31, 3pm. http://ifoa.org/events/cundill-prize-in-history The three 2015 finalists for the largest book prize in historical non-fiction will be in conversation about the experience of writing historical non-fiction.

Interview with Gil Troy in the McGill Reporter: http://publications.mcgill.ca/reporter/2015/10/40048/

The Cundill Prize in Historical Literature at McGill (Cundill Prize) was established in 2008 to recognize and promote literary and academic achievement in history. The award is offered each year by McGill University to an individual, of any nationality and from any country, who has published a book determined to have had (or likely to have) a profound literary, social and academic impact in the area of history.

Gil Troy is the author of The Age of Clinton: America in the 1990s, published by Thomas Dunne Books. He is a Professor of History at McGill University and a Visiting Scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington. A leading presidential historian, he is the award-winning author of 10 other books, including Moynihan’s Moment: America’s Fight against Zionism as Racism. He writes a regular column in The Daily Beast and The Jerusalem Post and has been widely quoted in the popular press, includingThe New York Times and The Washington Post.

To arrange interviews, contact Prof. Troy directly: giltroy@gmail.com or contact Stephen Weir in toronto at 416-801-30101 stephen@stephenweir.com.

 

  

 

STEPHEN WEIR

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