Back to the Well Among 5 Titles Shortlisted for The Donner Prize

The shortlist for the 2015/2016 Donner Prize, the award recognizing the best public policy book by a Canadian, was announced Wednesday in Toronto. Said Alan Gotlieb, Chairman of the Donner Canadian Foundation, “These five finalists offer compelling, timely, and thought-provoking contributions to the public policy discourse in our country. Each of these books deserves celebration and wide readership.”

Included on the shortlist was Back to the Well: Rethinking the Future of Water by Marq de Villiers. A clear-eyed assessment of the politics of our most precious resource — from the personal and commercial uses of water to the impact of climate change and global conflicts — Back to the Well examines how political ideologies often obscure underlying issues.  De Villiers makes the controversial suggestion that there is no global water crisis, but that water problems are fundamentally local and regional and can most effectively be addressed through local, rather than global, action.

Also shortlisted for the award this year are Middle Power, Middle Kingdom: What Canadians Need to Know about China in the 21st Century by David Mulroney (Allen Lane/Penguin Canada), From Treaty Peoples to Treaty Nation: A Road Map for All Canadians by Greg Poelzer & Ken S. Coates (UBC Press), Leading Research Universities in a Competitive World by Robert Lacroix & Louis Maheu (McGill-Queen’s University Press), What Is Government Good At?: A Canadian Answer by Donald J. Savoie (McGill-Queen’s University Press).

The winner of this year’s Donner Prize will be announced at an awards ceremony in Toronto on Wednesday, April 27, 2016. Further information about the prize and this year’s nominees can be found online at http://www.donnerbookprize.com.