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The Unexpected War: Canada in Kandahar wins The Writers' Trust of Canada's Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing

Authors Janice Gross Stein and Eugene Lang presented with coveted award at black-tie Politics & the Pen dinner in Ottawa.

February 28, 2008
Penguin Group (Canada) is proud to announce that authors Janice Gross Stein and Eugene Lang have won The Writers’ Trust of Canada’s Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing for The Unexpected War: Canada in Kandahar (Viking Canada, $35, Hardcover). The announcement was made at last night’s Politics & the Pen dinner, an annual black-tie event held in Ottawa and attended by prominent members of Ottawa society, business executives, politicians, diplomats and favourite Canadian authors.

Selected by a jury that included historian Robert Bothwell, columnist Lawrence Martin of The Globe and Mail, and freelance writer and broadcaster Brigitte Pellerin, The Unexpected War was one of five titles short-listed for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize, the most prestigious literary award given in Canada for political writing. Said the jury of the winning book:

"The Unexpected War takes us inside the doors of our federal government to tell an untold story – the genesis of Canada’s participation in the war in Afghanistan. It is a book which charts new ground, bringing us revelation upon revelation about this most significant story. With its clarity, its compelling prose, its ring of authenticity, The Unexpected War does what great books of non-fiction do. It illuminates our times."

Combining Gross Stein’s security and foreign policy expertise and with Lang’s first-hand accounts of backroom meetings and previously restricted correspondence, The Unexpected War presents a detailed chronology of the decision-making process executed by the Canadian government and subsequent actions taken from the aftermath of 9/11 to the present. The book also features candid interviews with key leaders including former prime minister Paul Martin; past ministers of defence Bill Graham, John McCallum and Gordon O'Connor; and General Rick Hillier.

As Canadian soldiers continue to fight an insurgency unlike any they have encountered before and the country struggles to understand its role both in the war and within the international community's efforts to aid Afghanistan, The Unexpected War provides not only a revelatory narrative but an informed assessment of what lies ahead for Canada as well. Janice Gross Stein and Eugene Lang bear witness to Canada's descent into the war in Afghanistan and confront the boiling debate over the appropriate role for Canada, its military, and its foreign policy in global security operations.

Janice Gross Stein is the Belzberg Professor of Conflict Management in the Department of Political Science and the director of the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a member of the Order of Canada, and an honourary foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was the Massey Lecturer in 2001, has been a Trudeau Fellow, and was awarded the Molson Prize by the Canada Council for an outstanding contribution by a social scientist to public debate.

Eugene Lang, a public policy consultant and writer, served as chief of staff to two ministers of national defence from 2002 to 2006. A 2006-2007 visiting fellows at the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto and a former Chevening Scholar at the London School of Economics, Lang is a frequent contributor to The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star, and is co-author (with Philip DeMont) of Turning Point: Moving Beyond Neoconservatism. He lives in Ottawa with his wife and two children.

The Unexpected War has also inspired a Global Television original documentary, "REVEALED: Path to War," produced and narrated by news anchor Kevin Newman, that will premiere on Global Television on Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 at 10 P.M. in ON, QC & BC; 9 P.M. in MB & SK; 8 P.M. in AB & Maritimes.

Founded in 1974 as a distribution company for Penguin books from all over the world, Penguin Group (Canada) began publishing Canadian and international titles in 1977, and quickly became known as one of Canada's pre-eminent publishers of literary fiction and non-fiction, now publishing an award-winning roster of Canadian authors including Janice Gross Stein, Eugene Lang, Margaret Macmillan, John Ralston Saul, Michael Ignatieff, Adrienne Clarkson, and Roy McGregor. In March, 2008, Penguin Group Canada will launch Extraordinary Canadians, a series of eighteen biographies written by Canada’s most influential contemporary writers, and the most ambitious set of biographies ever to be published in this country.

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