TORONTO AND WASHINGTON, February 10, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --

Patricia Rubin, President of the Lionel Gelber Prize Board and niece of Lionel Gelber, today announced the five books shortlisted for the 2014 Lionel Gelber Prize:

• The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide by Gary J. Bass, published by Alfred A. Knopf
• Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939 - 1941 by Lynne Olson, published by Random House
• Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser, published by The Penguin Press
• Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy, from 1453 to the Present by Brendan Simms, published by Basic Books
• The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Orderby Benn Steil, published by Princeton University Press

"Four of the five books on the Lionel Gelber Prize shortlist reveal telling aspects of American governance in pressing circumstances. We see how personalities in the White House play over-sized roles in the conduct of foreign policy, at times to tragic effect. In the fifth book, we see how inexorably the central dilemmas of Europe arrive on American shores without pity for American desires. There is an epic quality to this coincidence of subjects that can be read as one," said Jury Chair William Thorsell

The winner of the 2014 prize will be announced on March 31 and will speak at a free public event at the Munk School of Global Affairs on Thursday, April 24, 2014.

About the Jury: Jury Chair William Thorsell (Canada), was joined by Jurors Timothy Garton Ash (Oxford, England), Daniel W. Drezner (Massachusetts, USA), Chrystia Freeland (Toronto, Canada), and Matias Spektor (Brazil).

For further information or to arrange an interview with the finalists or jurors, please contact:

June Dickenson, junedickenson@cogeco.ca, +1-647-477-6000

Lionel Gelber Prize Website: http://www.utoronto.ca/munk/gelber | Facebook | Twitter

SOURCE University of Toronto