Samuel Johnson Prize

The longlist for the 2006 Samuel Johnson Prize, one of the world’s most prestigious prizes for non-fiction writing, has been announced. It has been given annually by the BBC Four (which I believe is a TV station) since 1999.

We own only two of the books on the list, and I haven’t read either, but I’ve looked at them pretty closely and I have read earlier works by these authors. Both books should be worth your time.

They are:

THE COLD WAR: A New History (2005), by John Lewis Gaddis. Gaddis is acknowledged as the leading historian of the Cold War.

AFTER THE VICTORIANS: The Decline of Britain in the World (2005), by A N Wilson.

I have Wilson’s earlier book, THE VICTORIANS (2003), and it’s excellent.