The Writers’ Trust of Canada has announced the five finalists for the 13th Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for the best political book of the year. The winner will be announced in Ottawa on March 6, 2013 at the Politics and the Pen Gala. One of the shortlisted authors will take home $25,000 for penning a work that “combines compelling new insights with depth of research and is of significant literary merit. Strong consideration is given to books that, in the opinion of the jury, have the potential to shape or influence Canadian political life.

Here are the nominees:

• Marcello Di Cintio for Walls: Travels Along the Barricades

• Taras Grescoe for Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile

• Noah Richler for What We Talk About When We Talk About War

• Jeffrey Simpson for Chronic Condition: Why Canada’s Health-Care System Needs to be Dragged into the 21st Century

• Peter F. Trent for The Merger Delusion: How Swallowing Its Suburbs Made an Even Bigger Mess of Montreal