The circle of six authors battling it out for the Samuel Johnson award has been revealed. As noted by BBC, the shortlist is of great variety, with memoirs and writings that center on philosophy and science all in the running for the prestigious award.
The first contender is Ted Hughes, who earned a spot for "The Unauthorised Life by Jonathan Bate," his controversial biography about the poet that contains accounts on his marriage with author Sylvia Plath and her death.
As per The Guardian, the judges found it deserving for a possible Samuel Johnson award victory because it was "an extraordinarily thoughtful account" that left "no one feeling neutral." Hughes is up against Robert Macfarlane with his book "Landmarks."
The author's work that dives into language and its power through stories about fellow writers and the many ways and words to describe land, nature, and weather, is in the list for being the "most beautiful, generous book."
Emma Sky could win the Samuel Johnson award for the "humane and highly significant insights" in her work "The Unravelling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq," which chronicles her experience in the country as a civilian volunteer and a political adviser.
According to Telegraph, this could be the most controversial book in the shortlist. In the book, Sky criticized Hillary Clinton about a "dysfunctional" mission. The author also talked about working with US commanding General Ray Odierno during the Iraq War.
"The Four-Dimensional Human" made Laurence Scott a contender for the £20,000 Samuel Johnson book prize owing to its "bold and thoughtful exploration of the challenges that digital technologies pose to our most basic conceptions of humanity."
Samanth Subramanian's "This Divided Island" is also up for the award. The author is commended for researching for the book thoroughly and interweaving these facts about what Sri Lanka looks like after the civil war into beautiful passages.
Completing the bunch is "Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and How to Think Smarter About People Who Think Differently" by Steve Silberman, a book the judges believes will have readers "moved and uplifted" as they flip through it.
The books that made it to this year's shortlist were chosen by a group of five experts led by Pulitzer prize-winning historian and journalist Anne Applebaum, who said via BBC that "the shortlist meeting was truly contentious."
In coming up with the shortlist, Samuel Johnson Prize executive director Toby Mundy said via The Bookseller "After a fiercely argued judges meeting, we now have a shortlist of terrific range and quality, proving that non-fiction publishing in this country is in rude health."
The winner of this year's Samuel Johnson award will be announced on Nov. 2.