BOOK AWARDS
The BBC4 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2008
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/books/features/samueljohnson
The BBC Four Samuel Johnson Prize is the UK's most important prize for non-fiction. Named in honour of the critic, essayist, lexicographer, poet and biographer Samuel Johnson, the prize is funded by an anonymous British businessman and open to any work of non-fiction published in English in the UK, regardless of the author's nationality.
Set up in 1999 following the demise of the NCR Book Award, Samuel Johnson remains the UK's richest prize for non-fiction with the winner receiving £30,000 and each of the other short-listed authors receiving £1000.
Winner (announced June 2008)
Shortlist (announced May 2008)
Longlist (announced March 2008)
| Title | Author | Publisher | ISBN |
| Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800 to the present. | Lisa Appignanesi | Virago | 9781844082339 |
| Miracles of Life: Shanghai to Shepperton: An Autobiography. | J.G. Ballard | Harpercollins | 9780007270729 |
| Nothing to be Frightened of. | Julian Barnes | Jonathan Cape | 9780224085236 |
| Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart. | Tim Butcher | Chatto & Windus | 9780701179816 |
| Crow Country: A Meditation on Birds, Landscape and Nature. | Mark Cocker | Jonathan Cape | 9780224076012 |
| Finding Moonshine: A Mathematician's Journey Through Symmetry. | Marcus du Sautoy | Fourth Estate | 9780007214617 |
| The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia. | Orlando Figes | Allen Lane | 9780713997026 |
| The Authorized Biography of VS Naipaul. | Patrick French | Picador | 9780330433501 |
| Rudolf Nureyev: The Life. | Julie Kavanagh | Fig Tree | 9781905490158 |
| Austerity Britain, 1945-1951. | David Kynaston | Bloomsbury | 9780747579854 |
| Mrs Woolf and the Servants. | Alison Light | Fig Tree | 9780670867172 |
| Cold Cream: My Early Life and Other Mistakes. | Ferdinand Mount | Bloomsbury | 9780747595076 |
| Watching the Door: Cheating Death in 1970's Belfast. | Kevin Myers | Atlantic Books | 9781843547280 |
| Confessions of an Eco Sinner:Travels to Find Where My Stuff Comes From. | Fred Pearce | Eden Project Books | 9781905811106 |
| Great Hatred, Little Room: Making Peace in Northern Ireland. | Jonathan Powell | Bodley Head | 9781847920324 |
| A Life of Picasso, Volume III: The Triumphant Years, 1917-1932. | John Richardson | Jonathan Cape | 9780224031219 |
| The Discovery of France. | Graham Robb | Picador | 9780330427609 |
| The Rest is Noise. | Alex Ross | Fourth Estate | 9781841154756 |
| The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: Or the Murder at Road Hill. | Kate Summerscale | Bloomsbury | 9780747582151 |
| The Brother Gardeners: Botany, Empire and the Birth of an Obsession. | Andrea Wulf | William Heinemann | 9780434016129 |
