Three leading book prizes were announced last week. Berlioz Volume 2: Servitude and Greatness by David Cairns (Allen Lane pound;25) has won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction. The shortlist for the pound;30,000 prize included two other biographies, Francis Wheen’s Karl Marx and Brenda Maddox’s George’s Ghosts: A New Life of W B Yeats; a travel book, Tony Hawks’s Playing the Moldovans at Tennis; a history of human genetics, Matt Ridley’s Genome; and a study of the United Nations, Deliver Us from Evil by William Shawcross.
The winner of the Mind Book of the Year Award is Making us Crazy: DSM - The Psychiatric Bible and the Creation of MentalDisorders by Herb Kutchins and Stuart Kirk (Constable pound;14.99), which takes a sceptical look at the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual’s definitions of 300 mental illnesses, most of which have been invented in the past 20 years.
The Aventis Prize for science books aims to encourage popular science books for non-specialist readers. The winner in the under-14 category is The DK Guide to Space by Peter Bond (Dorling Kindersley pound;12.99), voted best science book by pupils from 31 schools around the country. The general prize went to The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene (Vintage pound;7.99), a journey through modern physics and cosmology.
