Joseph Heath (Toronto) has been awarded the 2014 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing for his book, Enlightenment 2.0: Restoring Sanity to Our Politics, Our Economy, and Our Lives. The prize, which includes C$25,000, is awarded by the Writers’ Trust of Canada

for a book of literary nonfiction that captures a political subject of relevance to Canadian readers and has the potential to shape or influence thinking on Canadian political life. The winning work combines compelling new insights with depth of research and is of significant literary merit. The prize particularly values books which provide the general reader with an informed, unique perspective on the practice of Canadian politics, its players, or its principles. 

Heath’s book was described by the judges as “a magisterial survey of the shambles that remains of the Enlightenment’s great promise” and “a vivid chronicle of the descent of contemporary politics into a bedlam of competing irrationalities and appeals to unreason.”