Jeffrey Simpson, a Globe and Mail columnist, is nominated for his book Chronic Condition on Canadian health care. (Writers Trust of Canada)

Montreal writer Taras Grescoe’s examination of public transit, Straphanger, and Globe and Mail writer Jeffrey Simpson’s exploration of public healthcare, Chronic Condition, are among the finalists for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize.

The prize for the year’s best Canadian book of political writing is named for an outspoken MP from Windsor, Ontario, who died on Dec. 9, 1998.

The finalists, announced Tuesday:

• Marcello Di Cintio for Walls: Travels Along the Barricades, published by Goose Lane Editions.
• Taras Grescoe for Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile, published by HarperCollins Publishers.
• Noah Richler for What We Talk About When We Talk About War, published by Goose Lane Editions.
• Jeffrey Simpson for Chronic Condition: Why Canada’s Health-Care System Needs to be Dragged into the 21st Century, published by Allen Lane Canada.
• Peter F. Trent for The Merger Delusion: How Swallowing Its Suburbs Made an Even Bigger Mess of Montreal, published by McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Former MP Ed Broadbent, National Post columnist Tasha Kheiriddin, and novelist and translator Daniel Poliquin are on the jury.

The winner will be announced in Ottawa on March 6 at the Politics and the Pen Gala.