Posted on November 20, 2019 at 10:30 AM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek

The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction and its purse of £50,000 (about $64,600) have gone to a history of Jack the Ripper’s victims.

Social historian Hallie Rubenhold’s The Five aimed to tell the real stories of these five women and return their dignity to them, and according to the Guardian, it's the first book to do so while also not bothering to speculate about Jack's true identity.

Most notably, it argues that three of them were not, in fact, sex workers — an assertion that has brought significant pushback.

Rubenhold spoke about the outrage from “Ripperologists” to the Guardian a few months ago, if you’re wondering why that would be so controversial, and she also spoke more generally to the paper about her book if you’re just curious about it.

And in other award news, Book Marks reminds us of this century’s winners of the National Book Awards for Fiction and Nonfiction and what spoke to the judges about each.

This year’s awards will be handed out tonight. 

Categories: Today in Books

Tagged As: Awards, Book lists

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