Book about caring for dead wins award

TORONTO — American historian Thomas W. Laqueur has won the lucrative Cundill Prize for historical literature.

The University of California, Berkeley professor was awarded the $75,000 US grand prize at a gala in Toronto on Thursday for The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains, published by Princeton University Press.

The Work of the Dead explores how and why the living have cared for the dead from the ancient past to the 20th century.

“The contribution Thomas Laqueur’s book makes to our understanding of the role the dead play in life is hugely important,” said Cundill Prize chairwoman Antonia Maioni, dean of the faculty of arts at Montreal’s McGill University.

“It is a book that will fascinate readers both within and outside the academy.”

Laqueur said winning the Cundill Prize felt like “a real vindication” after labouring for 40 years on the book.

“When people ask me about: ‘Why you are interested in the dead or death, it’s like saying: ‘Why are you interested in love or sex?’ What else is there in life?” he said.

“In some sense, it’s so fundamental to who we are as humans.

“We’re mortal beings, and that defines everything that we are. And so our relationship to the people who have come before us — our parents, our grandparents, our ancestors — imagining ourselves as part of this story — because we’ll be dead someday — is, I think, the most human topic in the world.”

Laqueur was among three international finalists in contention for the grand prize, who were selected from 182 submissions.

University of York professor David Wootton and British historian and writer Andrea Wulf were awarded recognition of excellence prizes of $10,000 US apiece.

Wootton was shortlisted for The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution, published by HarperCollins.

Wulf was recognized for The Invention of Nature: Alexander Von Humboldt’s New World (Alfred A. Knopf, John Murray Publishers).

Now in its ninth year, the Cundill Prize is billed as the most lucrative award in historical non-fiction.

It was established in 2008 by McGill University alumnus F. Peter Cundill, who died in January 2011, and is administered by McGill’s dean of arts, with assistance from the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada.