The Book Prize Index

East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity

Philippe Sands

East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity is a 2016 book by Philippe Sands that examines the lives of two Jewish lawyers, Hersch Lauterpacht and Raphael Lemkin, born within three years of each other and students in the same city on the eastern outskirts of Europe, Lviv, who created the legal concepts of crimes against humanity and genocide. It is a memoir and history of the origins of international criminal law in the aftermath of the Second World War.

HistoryHistory · medium confidenceHistory81 signalsLlm Classifier: History -> HistoryKeyword Classifier: Memoir & Autobiography -> Memoir & AutobiographyKeyword Classifier: Religion -> ReligionWorld War IWar & Military StrategyWorld War II

Award History

1 wins · 2 total

AwardYearResultCategory / Notes
Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-FictionMajor2016WinnerSecondary source
Cundill History PrizeMajor2016LonglistSecondary source
View all award history (2)
Experimental book profileGenerated by GPT-5.4 nano · may contain inaccuracies

This is an unverified interpretation of the catalog description, offered as an opt-in discovery experiment—not as bibliographic fact.

  1. 01 Central figures

    • Hersch Lauterpacht74%
    • Raphael Lemkin74%

  2. 02 Central places

    • Lviv78%

  3. 03 Suggested argument

    No argument inferred with sufficient confidence.

  4. 04 Reading orientation

    45 / 100 academic

    Trade / academic crossover

    An estimate of intended readership and scholarly apparatus—not quality or importance.

Confidence percentages are the model's own estimates. Profile confidence: 74%.