Six-strong shortlist of £30,000 non-fiction prize covers the murder of Theo van Gogh, the exploits of a pioneering female archaelogist-cum-spy, and a portrait of the chaos of American rule in Iraq following the 2003 invasion.
A book that claims the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq gave a 24-year-old who had never before worked in finance the job of revitalising the Baghdad stock exchange was tonight shortlisted for the £30,000 Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction.
The book - Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone, by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, former Baghdad bureau chief for the Washington Post - also states that the traffic regulations imposed in the city after the CPA took charge were based on the state of Maryland's laws, downloaded by an aide.
Waterstone's expressed their delight at the choice, comparing Chandrasekaran's book with Michael Herr's acclaimed analysis of the Vietnam war, Dispatches, and describing it as a "classic account of the devastating effects of politically motivated conflict."
Chandrasekaran's book, extracts from which were carried in the Guardian's G2 magazine, was described by John Le Carré as "black comedy, set in the graveyard of the neo-conservative dream". It is based on hundreds of interviews and internal documents from within the Green Zone, the protected "Oz-like" enclosure inside which the CPA under, under its head, Paul Bremer, attempted to rule Iraq in the first year after Saddam's overthrow.
The book claims that people with previous experience in the Middle East were passed over in favour of lesser-qualified Republican party loyalists. A contractor without prior experience was paid millions to guard a closed airport.
The New York Times compared the book's chilling effect to the impact of Graham Greene's Vietnam novel, The Quiet American. The Wall Street Journal said "It would be an entertaining read if it weren't so depressing."
Also in the running is Georgina Howell's Daughter of the Desert, a biography of Gertude Bell, the pioneering Oxford graduate, mountaineer, archaeologist and spy who travelled from Delhi to the then Mesopotamian frontline, took up the causes of an autonomous Arab state and King Faisal and helped to draw Iraq's borders. Howell is joined on the shortlist by Ian Buruma, whose Murder in Amersterdam investigates the killing of the provocative columnist and filmmaker Theo van Gogh by an extremist who was angry because van Gogh had collaborated with an anti-Islamic politician. The other shortlisted titles are: Having It So Good, Britain in the 1950s by Peter Hennessy; Brainwash by Dominic Streatfeild; and The Verneys by Adrian Tinniswood.
The dominance of political themes has elbowed out the gentler art of literary biography from the climactic stages of the contest. Biographies by two outstanding practitioners, Claire Tomalin's Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man, and Hermione Lee's study of Edith Wharton, would have been possible favourites to win in a less political year, as would Richard Dawkin's atheist manifesto, The God Delusion. "The real surprise omission is The Time-Torn Man," confirmed Waterstone's non-fiction buyer Joe Browes.
The chair of judges, Helena Kennedy QC, said, "These are six challenging and extremely well written books which reflect the ideas and spirit of the society we live in. The list helps to bring an understanding of our world at a crucial time in history." The other judges are the Iraqi-born theoretical nuclear physicist and broadcaster Jim Al-Khalili; the writer and editor, Diana Athill; the historian Tristram Hunt; and the journalist and broadcaster Mark Lawson.
Kennedy, who disclosed that Claire Tomalin's biography had lost a close final vote, said, "Jim Al-Khalili had no special influence. Imperial Life in the Emerald City was a title everyone was keen on".
The shortlist
Murder in Amsterdam by Ian Buruma (Atlantic Books)
Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran (Bloomsbury)
Having it so Good: Britain in the Fifties by Peter Hennessy (Allen Lane)
Daughter of the Desert by Georgina Howell (Pan Macmillan)
Brainwash by Dominic Streatfeild (Hodder and Stoughton)
The Verneys by Adrian Tinniswood (Jonathan Cape)