Accounts of discord in the Middle East from the middle ages to the 21st century, a polemical analysis of race in Britain and a moving memoir about the curative effect of gardening are among the books longlisted for the 2017 Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction.

The historian Simon Schama strides into contention for the £30,000 award with the second volume of The Story of the Jews, alongside Pulitzer prizewinner Anne Applebaum and her history of the disaster Stalin inflicted on Ukraine, Red Famine.

The biographer Jenny Uglow is nominated for her portrait of Britain’s favourite nonsense poet, Mr Lear, while Christopher de Bellaigue gets the nod for his analysis of the encounter between modernity and the Muslim faith, The Islamic Enlightenment.

A memoir exploring how working on an allotment helped him overcome the trauma of a childhood in care from the Observer’s Allan Jenkins, Plot 29, appears beside the poet and novelist Kapka Kassabova’s journey through Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece, Border, and the activist Reni Eddo-Lodge’s polemic Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race.

According to the chair of judges, TV executive Peter Bazalgette, the breadth of this year’s longlist is purely accidental.

“It so happens there’s a pretty good spread of culture and of gender,” Bazalgette said. “We didn’t set out with quotas, we set out to find the best books.”

The even balance between men and women reflects the efforts made by publishers after the award – in its previous incarnation as the Samuel Johnson prize – found room for only one woman on the 2015 longlist.

“It’s great that the list is evenly split,” Bazalgette said. “Publishers have got their act together and submitted some really great books by both men and women.”

According to Bazalgette, about 40% of the 200 books considered for the 2017 award were written by women, with many of this year’s submissions tackling urgent issues.

“Our culture is really contemporary, which is a sign of health,” Bazalgette said, citing WG Sebald’s suggestion that traumatic events make it difficult to examine the recent past. “It’s writing about important things we care about now, but in a rather more considered way than broadcast news.”

Souad Mekhennet makes the list with her exploration of modern jihad, I Was Told to Come Alone, while Mark O’Connell looks to the future with his study of people attempting to transcend the limitations of humanity, To Be a Machine.

Also nominated are Caroline Moorehead, for her biography of a family who struggled against Mussolini, A Bold and Dangerous Family, David France for his study of the Aids epidemic, How to Survive a Plague, and Daniel Mendelsohn for an account of his father enrolling on the author’s course about Homer, An Odyssey.

Bazalgette is joined on the judging panel by science writer Anjana Ahuja, singer Ian Bostridge, literary critic Sarah Churchwell and broadcaster Razia Iqbal. The shortlist for the 2017 award is due to be announced on 6 October, with the winner named on 16 November. The winning author will join a roster including Philippe Sands, Helen Macdonald, Anna Funder and Anthony Beevor.

The 2017 Baillie Gifford prize longlist

Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine, Anne Applebaum (Allen Lane)
The Islamic Enlightenment: The Modern Struggle Between Faith and Reason, Christopher de Bellaigue (The Bodley Head)
Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, Reni Eddo-Lodge (Bloomsbury Circus)
How to Survive a Plague, David France (Picador)
Plot 29, Allan Jenkins (4th Estate)
Border: A Journey to The Edge of Europe, Kapka Kassabova (Granta Books)
I Was Told to Come Alone: My Journey Behind The Lines of Jihad, Souad Mekhennet (Virago)
An Odyssey: A Father, a Son and An Epic, Daniel Mendelsohn (William Collins)
A Bold and Dangerous Family: The Rosselis and the Fight Against Mussolini, Caroline Moorehead (Chatto & Windus)
To Be A Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death, Mark O’Connell (Granta Books)
Belonging: The Story of The Jews, Simon Schama (The Bodley Head)
Mr Lear: A Life of Art and Nonsense, Jenny Uglow (Faber & Faber)