This year’s judges have announced the 13 books that make up the Baillie Gifford Prize Longlist for 2023. The judges are: literary editor of Financial Times, Frederick Studemann (chair); award-winning author Andrea Wulf, theatre critic for The Guardian Arifa Akbar, the writer and historian Ruth Scurr, journalist and critic Tanjil Rashid, and Chief Executive of the Royal Society of Arts Andrew Haldane.
The titles on this year’s longlist are:
| Author / co-author (Nationality) | Title (Imprint) |
| Daron Acemoglu (Turkish-American) and Simon Johnson (British-American) | Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity (Basic Books, John Murray Press UK, Hachette UK) |
| Hannah Barnes (British) | Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children (Swift Press) |
| Tania Branigan (British) | Red Memory: Living, Remembering and Forgetting China’s Cultural Revolution (Faber & Faber) |
| Christopher Clark (Australian) | Revolutionary Spring: Fighting for a New World 1848-1849 (Allen Lane, Penguin Random House) |
| Jeremy Eichler (American) | Time’s Echo: The Second World War, The Holocaust, and The Music of Remembrance (Faber & Faber) |
| David Grann (American) | The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder (Simon & Schuster) |
| Jennifer Homans (American) | Mr. B: George Balanchine’s Twentieth Century (Granta Books, Granta) |
| Katja Hoyer (German) | Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990 (Allen Lane, Penguin Press) |
| Tiya Miles (American) | All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake (Profile Books) |
| Siddhartha Mukherjee (Indian-American) | The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human (The Bodley Head, Vintage, Penguin Random House UK) |
| Nathan Thrall (American) | A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: A Palestine Story (Allen Lane, Penguin Press) |
| Chris van Tulleken (British) | Ultra Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn’t Food … and Why Can’t We Stop? (Cornerstone, Penguin Random House) |
| John Vaillant (American-Canadian) | Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World (Sceptre, Hodder & Stoughton) |
Tune in to the latest episode of the Read Smart podcast this Friday! Judges, Arifa Akbar and Ruth Scurr will be delving into the 13 longlisted works as well as their insights into the judging process. Catch up on all previous episodes of the podcast by visiting our website, Spotify, and Soundcloud.
The announcement of the six books shortlisted for this year’s prize will take place on Sunday 8 October during a live event at the Cheltenham Literature Festival.
The winner will be announced on Thursday 16 November at an award ceremony at the Science Museum. The award ceremony and the Read Smart podcast are generously supported by the Blavatnik Foundation. The announcement will also be live-streamed across the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction social channels.
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