A book award at the serious end of town, the annual Arthur Ross Book Award recognises books that make an outstanding contribution to the understanding of foreign policy or international relations. The prize, endowed by Arthur Ross in 2001, is for nonfiction works (including biography) from the past two years, in English or translation, that merit special attention for:
* bringing forth new information that can change our understanding of events or problems;
* developing analytical approaches that allow new and different insights into a key issue;
* or providing new ideas to help resolve foreign-policy problems.
The award consists of a USD$30,000 first prize, a USD$15,000 second prize, and a USD$7,500 honorable mention.
Tragic is delighted to see that the former Australian politician, and now globe-trotting Diplomat, Gareth Evans, got an Honorable Mention this year for The Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and For All . An important book. The winning book, Philip P. Pan, Out of Mao's Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China, is probably a must read for us all given the rise and rise of China.
Tragic maintains an award summary page at Literary Awards Australia.
2009 Winners of the Arthur Ross Book Award:
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Gold Medal Philip P. Pan, Out of Mao's Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China (Simon & Schuster)- More than fifteen years after the fall of the Soviet Union, China is engaged in the largest experiment in authoritarianism in the world. By launching market reforms while continuing to restrict political freedom, the Chinese Communist Party has challenged the Western assumption that economic growth must lead to political liberalization - an assumption at the core of UK and American foreign policy. At the same time, the struggle for democratic change is reaching a crescendo, marking a moment in the history of modern China as uncertain and consequential as the rise of Mao's cult of personality, or the run-up to the Tiananmen Square massacre. From the booming cities of Beijing and Shanghai to the rural communities of the vast countryside, this ground-breaking book introduces us to some of the courageous people who are dedicated to more
Silver Medal Ahmed Rashid - Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia (Penguin Group) -
After September 11th , Ahmed Rashid’s crucial book Taliban introduced American readers to that now notorious regime. In this new work, he returns to Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia to review the catastrophic aftermath of America’s failed war on terror. Called “Pakistan’s best and bravest reporter” by Christopher Hitchens, Rashid has shown himself to be a voice of reason amid the chaos of present-day Central Asia. Descent Into Chaos is his blistering critique of American policy—a dire warning and an impassioned call to correct these disasterous strategies before these failing states threaten global stability and bring devastation to our world.
About the Author
Ahmed Rashid is a Pakistani journalist based in Lahore who writes for the The Washington Post, Daily Telegraph (London), the International Herald Tribune, The New York Review of Books, BBC Online, and The Nation. His previous books include Jihad, Taliban, and The Resurgence of Cetral Asia. He appears regularly on NPR, CNN, and the BBC World Service. --
Honorable Mention Gareth Evans - The Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and For All (Brookings Institution Press) - After the Holocaust, the world vowed it would never again permit such mass atrocity crimes, yet many have since gone unchecked, from the killing fields of Cambodia to the machetes of Rwanda to the ongoing nightmare in Darfur. Gareth Evans, president of the International Crisis Group, explains this lack of government action. In a more hopeful vein, however, he also shows how the emergence of a new international norm can protect the peoples of the world from mass crimes. The Responsibility to Protect (or R2P) concept was born in 2001 and embraced at the UN World Summit in 2005. The heart of this new international norm is the belief that if sovereign governments fail to protect their own people from genocide, ethnic cleansing, or other major crimes against humanity, then the wider international community must take whatever action is appropriate. The new norm emphasizes assistance and prevention, not coercion, but it also accepts that it is sometimes right to fight. More
About the Author
Gareth Evans is co-chair of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament. Evans is former president and CEO of the International Crisis Group, a leading international nongovernmental organization advising on conflict prevention and resolution. He came to ICG in 2000, after eight years as Australia's foreign minister.No one could be more qualified to write this book. Evans co-chaired the Canadian-sponsored International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty that initiated the Responsibility to Protect idea in 2001, and he was a member of the UN Secretary General's High Level Panel that in 2004 proposed its adoption by the World Summit. He won the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas ImprovingWorld Order for his 1994 Foreign Policy article, Cooperative Security and Intra-State Conflict
5/4 bookies favourite, Blackmoor, , by Edward Hogan has won the £10,000 prize named for the literary agent and publisher. Mr. Hogan was delighted- he is, apparently, totally skint. Ah writing. The glamour.
The book had previously been shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and was a runner-up for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year. Tragic understands he only got £500 for that. Hopefully he put the lot on with the bookies to win the Elliott. 
Winner
