TORONTO -- Toronto-based journalist and author Noah Richler has received another prestigious nomination for his book "What We Talk About When We Talk About War."

On Tuesday, the son of the late novelist Mordecai Richler made the short list for the $25,000 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing for the Goose Lane Editions polemic, which focuses on Canada's military.

In December, the book made the short list for the $25,000 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction, and last fall it was a finalist for a Governor General's Literary Award.

Other finalists for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize include Westmount, Que., mayor Peter F. Trent for "The Merger Delusion: How Swallowing Its Suburbs Made an Even Bigger Mess of Montreal" (McGill-Queen's University Press).

Ottawa journalist Jeffrey Simpson made the cut for "Chronic Condition: Why Canada's Health-Care System Needs to be Dragged into the 21st Century" (Allen Lane Canada), which is also up for the Charles Taylor award.

Montreal-based author Taras Grescoe is a Shaughnessy Cohen contender for "Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile" (HarperCollins Publishers). That book is also on the short list for the $40,000 B.C. National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction and was a finalist for last year's Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Non-fiction.

And Calgary's Marcello Di Cintio made the Shaughnessy Cohen short list with "Walls: Travels Along the Barricades" (Goose Lane Editions).

The Writers' Trust of Canada will announce the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize winner at the Politics and the Pen Gala in Ottawa on March 6.

Each nominated author will receive $2,500.

This year's jury includes politician and political scientist Ed Broadbent, columnist Tasha Kheiriddin, and novelist and translator Daniel Poliquin.

The Shaughnessy Cohen Prize, which is into its 13th year, is named after the late MP from Windsor, Ont.

It is awarded annually "to a non-fiction book that captures a political subject of interest to Canadian readers and enhances our understanding of the issue."