The shortlist for the Longman/History Today Book Prize 2013 is announced today.

The award is given for an author’s first or second work of history published between October 2011 and September 2012. The winning book will have contributed significantly to making its subject accessible and rewarding to the general reader of history.

The judges this year are: Jeremy Black, Professor of History at the University of Exeter; Juliet Gardiner, author of The Thirties: An Intimate History of Britain (HarperPress); Paul Lay, Editor of History Today; and Miri Rubin, Professor of Early Modern History at Queen Mary, University of London.

The winner will be announced on January 9th, 2013 at the Royal Society, London.

The shortlist is:

Keith Lowe, Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II (Penguin/Viking).

- Read our review

Hannah Newton, The Sick Child in Early Modern England, 1580-1720 (Oxford University Press).

Glyn Parry, The Arch Conjuror of England: John Dee (Yale University Press).

- Read our review

Andrew Preston, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy (Knopf).

Bill Schwarz, Memories of Empire. Vol. I The White Man’s World (Oxford University Press).

Caroline Shenton, The Day Parliament Burned Down (Oxford University Press).

- Read our review

Ian P. Wei, Intellectual Culture in Early Medieval Paris, c. 1100-1330 (Cambridge University Press).

Alison Winter, Memory: Fragments of a Modern History (Chicago University Press).

Alun Withey, Physick and the Family: Health, Medicine and Care in Wales, 1600-1750 (Manchester University Press).

Thomas Wright, Circulation: William Harvey’s Revolutionary Idea (Chatto & Windus).