Toronto anthropologist David R. Samson has won the 2023 Basillie Prize for his book Our Tribal Future: How to Channel our Foundational Human Instincts Into a Force for Good.
Established in 2021, the annual $60,000 award recognizes the best nonfiction book that advances public discourse relevant to Canadians.
“In Our Tribal Future, David R. Samson does something remarkable: in sparkling prose and rich empirical detail, he provides a tour de force of how our tribal brains operate in our modern world,” said the jury, composed of author and physician Samantha Nutt, policy expert Taki Sarantakis and digital strategist Scott Young in a press statement.
“Things that were essential to our survival in the past now potentially imperil our future. This important contribution to our public policy toolkit explains why trust is declining across our society and why our public spaces increasingly feel hostile rather than welcoming. There is no one in public life — and no one interested in public life — who will not benefit from the deep and enduring implications of this book.”
Samson is an associate professor of biological anthropology at University of Toronto and the director of the Sleep and Human Evolution Lab.
The other finalists were Michelle Good for Truth Telling: Seven Conversations about Indigenous Life in Canada, Ryan Manucha for Booze, Cigarettes, and Constitutional Dust-Ups: Canada’s Quest for Interprovincial Free Trade, Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans and Avi Goldfarb for Power and Prediction: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence and Max Wyman for The Compassionate Imagination: How the Arts Are Central to a Functioning Democracy.
The five finalists were selected by the jury from 43 titles submitted by 25 publishing imprints. Each will receive $5,000.
The prize is funded by businessman and philanthropist Jim Balsillie, as part of his $3 million donation to Writers’ Trust to support Canadian literature. It’s the largest award of its kind for Canadian public policy titles.
He also funded the $60,000 Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, renamed in 2021 after Margaret Atwood and Graeme Gibson, two of the founders of Writers’ Trust of Canada.
The Writers’ Trust of Canada is an organization that supports Canadian writers through literary awards, fellowships, financial grants, mentorships and more.
It also gives out seven prizes in recognition of the year’s best in fiction, nonfiction and short story, as well as mid-career and lifetime achievement awards. The winners of the Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Hilary Weston Writers’ Prize for Nonfiction were revealed on Nov. 21.
Previous Balsillie Prize winners include Innovation in Real Places by Dan Breznitz and Dream States by John Lorinc.