Samuel Johnson Prize

The prize was established in December 1998 with the purpose of celebrating the variety and originality of contemporary non-fiction publishing. The Samuel Johnson Prize has been enthusiastically greeted by a literary world in which there has hitherto been a paucity of prestigious prizes for non-fiction. Sponsored anonymously by a retired British businessman, the annual prize is worth Ł30,000 to the winner, and Ł2,500 to each of the other shortlisted authors.

Margaret Macmillan's Peacemakers Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World | Hardcover has won the 2002 Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction.

Samuel Johnson Prize: Shortlist 2002 | 2002 Longlist | 2001 | Shortlist 2001 | 2000 | 1999

The Samuel Johnson Prize is open to books in the areas of current affairs, history, politics, science, sport, travel, biography, autobiography and the arts. Books published in English in the UK between 1 January and 30 April of the year the prize is presented are eligible for the award.

The longlist is released in mid-May. The winner is announced mid-June.

Shortlist 2002 - 7 Titles

Roy Jenkins Churchill: A Biography | Hardcover

Eamon Duffy The Voices of Morebath | Hardcover

William Fiennes The Snow Geese | Hardcover | Paperback

Miranda Carter Anthony Blunt: His Lives | Hardcover

Richard Hamblyn The Invention of Clouds: How an Amateur Meteorologist Formed the Language of the Sky | Hardcover

Margaret Macmillan Peacemakers Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World | Hardcover Winner

Brendan Simms Unfinest Hour

Longlist 2002 - 21 Titles

Steven Johnson Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software | Hardcover | Paperback

Julia Blackburn Old Man Goya | Hardcover

Miranda Carter Anthony Blunt: His Lives | Hardcover

Vanessa Collingridge Captain Cook | Hardcover

Eamon Duffy The Voices of Morebath | Hardcover

William Fiennes The Snow Geese | Hardcover | Paperback

Fergus Fleming Ninety Degrees North | Hardcover

Alexandra Fuller Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood | Hardcover | Paperback | ebook Microsoft | ebook Adobe

Richard Hamblyn The Invention of Clouds: How an Amateur Meteorologist Formed the Language of the Sky | Hardcover

Roy Jenkins Churchill: A Biography | Hardcover

Arthur Herman The Scottish Enlightenment: The Historical Age of the Historical Nation | Paperback

Jan Morris Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere | Hardcover

Jonathan Rose The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes | Hardcover

Ronald Segal Islam's Black Slaves: The Other Black Diaspora (the breaking up and scattering of a people) | Hardcover | Paperback

Carole Seymour-Jones Painted Shadow: The Life of Vivienne Eliot, First Wife of T. S. Eliot, and the Long-Suppressed Truth About Her Influence on His Genius | Hardcover by Carole Seymour-Jones

Keith Ward God: A Guide for the Perplexed | Hardcover

Richard Holmes Redcoat

Margaret Macmillan Peacemakers

Philip Mansel Paris Between Empires 1814-1852

Brendan Simms Unfinest Hour

John Sulston and Georgina Ferry The Common Thread

Shortlist 2001

Michael Burleigh - The Third Reich: A New History | Hardcover

Richard Fortey - Trilobite! Eyewitness To Evolution | Hardcover

Catherine Merridale - Night Of Stone: Death And Memory In Russia | Hardcover

Graham Robb - Rimbaud | Hardcover

Simon Sebag Montefiore - Prince Of Princes: The Life Of Potemkin