Read Smart: The 2020 Shortlist

Welcome to the Read Smart shortlist episode! Host, BBC's Razia Iqbal explores each of the 6 shortlisted titles and authors with 2020 judges, BBC Radio 4 Today presenter Martha Kearney, editor and novelist Simon Ings, and New York Times opinion editor Max Strasser. They go through each book individually and discuss how each title reflects the very best in non-fiction.

The 2020 shortlist is:

• One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time by Craig Brown (Harper Collins, 4th Estate)
• The Idea of the Brain: A History by Matthew Cobb (Profile Books)
• Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture by Sudhir Hazareesingh (Penguin Random House, Allen Lane)
• Our Bodies, Their Battlefield: What War Does to Women by Christina Lamb (HarperCollins, William Collins)
• Stranger in the Shogun's City: A Woman’s Life in Nineteenth-Century Japan by Amy Stanley (Vintage, Chatto & Windus)
• The Haunting of Alma Fielding: A True Ghost Story by Kate Summerscale (Bloomsbury Publishing, Bloomsbury Circus)

This episode was recorded and produced remotely. 

Read Smart Podcast is commissioned by The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction and is generously supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation.