Music and Maths books considered for Samuel Johnson Prize

22 April 2010

Phillip Ball's The Music Instinct - an account of the universal nature of music, and Alex's Adventures and Numberland, written by Alex Bellos - an attempt to unravel the mystery of maths in everyday things, have made the 2010 Samuel Johnson Prize Long list.

The Samuel Johnson Prize is sponsored by the BBC for non-fiction.This year's event will be chaired by Evan Davies (Radio 4 – Today Programme, Dragons Den),  Other judges are: Daniel Finkelstein (Editor - The Times, Stella Tillyard (author), Roger Highfield (Editor - New Scientist), and Jan Dalley (Author and Editor).

19 books have been selected from 133 submissions. The full list of nominations are:

Philip Ball - The Music Instinct
Alex Bellos - Alex's Adventures in Numberland
Stewart Brand - Whole Earth Discipline
Nick Bunker - Making Haste from Babylon 
William Dalrymple - Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India 
Barbara Demick - Nothing to Envy 
Peter Hessler - Country Driving
Edward Hollis - The Secret Lives of Buildings
Luke Jennings - Blood Knots 
David Kynaston - Family Britain 1951 - 1957
Joe Moran - On Roads
Said Sayrafiezadeh - When Skateboards Will Be Free
Andrew Ross Sorkin - Too Big to Fail: Inside the Battle to save Wall Street
Hilary Spurling - Burying the Bones
Frances Stoner Saunders - The Woman Who Shot Mussolini
Jenny Uglow - A Gambling Man
Ngugi Wa Thiong'o - Dreams in a Time of War
Sara Wheeler - The Magnetic North
Richard Wrangham - Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human

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