The shortlist will be revealed on 14 June, with the winner announced on 6 July.
The longlist in full:
Tolstoy by Rosamund Bartlett
Afghantsy by Rodric Braithwaite
Through the Language Glass by Guy Deutscher
The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund De Waal
Mao’s Great Famine by Frank Dikötter
Caravaggio by Andrew Graham Dixon
Liberty’s Exiles by Maya Jasanoff
Capitalism 4.0 by Anatole Kaletsky
Scott-land: The Man Who Invented a Nation by Stuart Kelly
People Who Eat Darkness by Richard Lloyd Parry
The Bridge by David Remnick
The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley
Bismarck: A Life by Jonathan Steinberg
Reprobates by John Stubbs
Storyteller: The Life of Roald Dahl by Donald Sturrock
Bomber County by Daniel Swift
Sex Before the Sexual Revolution by Simon Szreter and Kate Fisher
Amexica: War Along The Borderline by Ed Vulliamy
via Biography dominates Samuel Johson prize longlist | Books | guardian.co.uk.