Five Books Advance to the 2013 Lionel Gelber Prize Shortlist

TORONTO and WASHINGTON, February 19, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --

Patricia Rubin, President of the Lionel Gelber Prize Board, today announced the 2013 prize shortlist:

• Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956 by Anne Applebaum (Washington, DC and Poland)
• The Second Nuclear Age: Strategy, Danger, and the New Power Politics by Paul Bracken (Connecticut, USA)
• Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else by Chrystia Freeland (New York City, USA)
• Ghosts of Empire: Britain's Legacies in the Modern World by Kwasi Kwarteng (London, England)
• From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia by Pankaj Mishra (London, England)

"These five books offer fresh perspectives from the past that bring deeper understanding of current global issues, and compelling perspectives on the future that speak of things to come.  The wisdom of this small crowd is worth the world's attention," said Jury Chair William Thorsell.

The 2013 prize jurors are: Jury Chair William Thorsell (Toronto, Canada), Daniel W. Drezner (Medford, USA), Gaynor Lilian Johnson, Ph. D. (Manchester, UK), Walter Russell Mead (Annandale-on-Hudson, USA), and Margaret Wente (Toronto, Canada).

About the Lionel Gelber Prize: Presented annually by The Lionel Gelber Foundation, in partnership with Foreign Policy Magazine and the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, the Lionel Gelber Prize is a literary award for the world's best non-fiction book in English on foreign affairs that seeks to deepen public debate on significant international issues.

For further information:

Media Contact: June Dickenson: junedickenson@cogeco.ca / +1-905-689-0388
Prize website: http://www.utoronto.ca/munk/gelber/
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