Five Finalists Chosen for the 2013 Asia Society Bernard Schwartz Book Award

Five books recognized for their outstanding contributions to the understanding of Asia have been chosen as finalists for the 2013 Asia Society Bernard Schwartz Book Award. The finalists were selected from over 100 nominations submitted by U.S. and Asia-based publishers for books published in 2012. The books are:
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo (Random House)

The China Choice: Why America Should Share Power by Hugh White (Black Inc.)
China's Search for Security by Andrew J. Nathan & Andrew Scobell (Columbia University Press)
From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia by Pankaj Mishra (Penguin Press UK)
Restless Empire: China and the World since 1750 by Odd Arne Westad (Basic Books)

The finalists were selected by a jury co-chaired by Carol Gluck, George Sansom Professor of History at Columbia University, andTommy T. B. Koh, Singapore’s Ambassador-at-Large, and composed of leading experts and figures in policy, academia, journalism, and publishing from Indonesia, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, and the United States. The winning author, who will be awarded a $20,000 prize, and two honorable mentions, each receiving a $2,000 prize, will be named in late October. A special event in their honor will be held at Asia Society’s New York City headquarters in late 2013.

2013 Jury Members

Carol Gluck (Jury Co-Chair) is the George Sansom Professor of History at Columbia University. She specializes in modern Japan from the late nineteenth century to the present, international relations, and historiography and public memory in Japan and the West. Her most recent book is Words in Motion: Toward a Global Lexicon (Duke University Press, 2009). Her next book, Thinking with the Past: Modern Japan and History, will be published by the University of California Press in 2013, and Past Obsessions: World War II in History and Memory (Columbia University Press) is forthcoming.

Tommy T.B. Koh (Jury Co-Chair) is Singapore’s Ambassador-At-Large, Special Adviser at the Institute of Policy Studies at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, and Chairman of the National Heritage Board. He is on secondment from the Faculty of Law of the National University of Singapore. Among his many government appointments, he has served as Singapore’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, High Commissioner to Canada, and Ambassador to the United States and Mexico. He is a member of Asia Society’s Global Council.

Susan Glasser Susan Glasser is editor of POLITICO magazine, leading new divisions that will mark the news organization's expansion into longform reporting and opinion journalism. Glasser joins POLITICO after several years as editor in chief of the award-winning magazine Foreign Policy, overseeing its relaunch in print and as a daily online magazine. Before that, Glasser worked for a decade at the Washington Post, where she was a foreign correspondent, editor, and political reporter. She and her husband, New York Times White House correspondent Peter Baker, spent four years as co-chiefs of the Post’s Moscow Bureau, throughout President Vladimir Putin’s first term. Their book, Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the End of Revolution, was published in 2005. Glasser also covered the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as a correspondent for the Post and held a number of senior positions, including assistant managing editor for national news and editor of Outlook, the Post’s weekly section of commentary and ideas

Vali Nasr is Dean of the Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies and a contributor at Bloomberg View. He served as Senior Advisor to U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, between 2009 and 2011. He is a senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution; a member of the U.S. Department of State's Foreign Affairs Policy Board; a trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the National Democratic Institute; and a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Kazuo Ogoura is currently serving as Secretary General of the Council of Tokyo 2020 Bid Committee. Prior to his appointment to the Committee, Ambassador Ogoura was President of the Japan Foundation from 2003–11. Before this, he was a Visiting Researcher at the National Institute for Research Advancement and an invited Professor at Aoyama Gakuin University. He worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan for 40 years before retiring in 2002. His key posts in the Ministry included Director-General of the Cultural Affairs Department, Director-General of the Economic Affairs Bureau, and Deputy Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was also Japan’s Ambassador to Vietnam, South Korea, and France.

Thitinan Pongsudhirak is Associate Professor of International Political Economy and Director of the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok. His publications have focused on Thailand’s political economy, foreign policy, and media, as well as ASEAN and East Asian security and economic cooperation. His comments and op-eds have been featured in international and local media. With prior experience at BBC World Service and The Economist Intelligence Unit, he earned degrees from the University of California at Santa Barbara and Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). His PhD at the London School of Economics received the UK’s best dissertation prize. He has held visiting positions at SAIS, Stanford University, and Singapore’s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, serving on editorial boards of several academic journals.

Susan Shirk is Director of the University of California’s system-wide Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation and Ho Miu Lam professor of China and Pacific Relations at UC San Diego. From 2008–09, she was the Arthur Ross Fellow of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at Asia Society. She also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of East Asia and Pacific Affairs from 2000–03, with responsibility for China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Mongolia. Her most recent publication is Changing Media, Changing China, which was published in 2011.

Rizal Sukma is Executive Director of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta, Indonesia. He is also Chairman of International Relations in the Muhammadiyah Central Executive Board, and a member of the Board of Governors of the implementing agency for the Bali Democracy Forum at the Institute for Peace and Democracy. He has served as a member of the National Committee on Strategic Defense Review at the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Indonesia, and the National Drafting Committee for the National Defense Bill and the Armed Forces Bill. He is the first Indonesian to receive the Nakasone Award and was named as one of 100 Top Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine in 2009.

Nominate a Book

Asia Society is no longer accepting submissions for the 2013 Bernard Schwartz Book Award. Please check back shortly for updates on next year's nomination process.

The Bernard Schwartz Book Award is an international award recognizing nonfiction books that provide outstanding contributions to the understanding of contemporary Asia and/or U.S.-Asia relations. The award is designed to advance public awareness of the changes taking place in Asia and the implications for the wider world, and to raise the profile of authors making a meaningful contribution to this dialogue. Books are evaluated based on their ability to:
Provide special insights and new perspectives into understanding contemporary Asia and/or U.S.-Asia relations.
Describe and explain changes taking place in Asia and/or in U.S.-Asia relations and the implications for the wider world to a general audience.
Bring forth ideas that offer potential policy impacts relating to the region.

An independent jury comprised of experts in the fields of policy, media, academia, cultural affairs, and business selects the winner. The winning author receives a $20,000 prize and is honored at a special event at Asia Society. Two honorable mentions are selected and each receives a $2,000 prize.

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