SABEW names short list for Business Book of the Year

The Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing announced the shortlist for its fifth annual Best in Business Book Awards, which recognizes and celebrates outstanding business books published between August 1, 2023, and July 31, 2024.

A prestigious panel of judges selected 22 books for this year’s shortlist. The shortlisted books are from three categories: Business Reporting, Career and Financial Development, and Management and Leadership.

The 22 books the judges selected for the shortlist are:

Business Reporting

• Battle for the Bird: Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk, and the $44 Billion Fight for Twitter’s Soul by Kurt Wagner (Atria Books)
• Egyptian Made: Women, Work, and the Promise of Liberation by Leslie T. Chang (Random House)
• Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk’s Twitter by Zoë Schiffer (Penguin Random House | Portfolio)
• Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet by Taylor Lorenz (Simon & Schuster)
• Fifteen Cents on the Dollar: How Americans Made the Black-White Wealth Gap by Louise Story and Ebony Reed (HarperCollins Publishers)
• Means of Control: How the Hidden Alliance of Tech and Government Is Creating a New American Surveillance State by Byron Tau (Crown)
• Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall by Zeke Faux (Crown Currency)
• Taming the Street: The Old Guard, the New Deal, and FDR’s Fight to Regulate American Capitalism by Diana B. Henriques (Random House)
• The Venture Alchemists: How Big Tech Turned Profits Into Power by Rob Lalka (Columbia Business School Publishing)

Career and Financial Development

• Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout by Cal Newport (Penguin Random House | Portfolio)
• Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection by Charles Duhigg (Random House)
• Think Faster, Talk Smarter: How to Speak Successfully When You’re Put on the Spot by Matt Abrahams (Simon Acumen)
• 15 Lies Women Are Told at Work: …And the Truth We Need to Succeed by Bonnie Hammer (Simon Element)

Management and Leadership

• Big Bets: How Large-Scale Change Really Happens by Rajiv Shah (Simon Acumen)
• Cultures of Growth: How the New Science of Mindset Can Transform Individuals, Teams, and Organizations by Mary C. Murphy (Simon & Schuster)
• May Contain Lies: How Stories, Statistics, and Studies Exploit Our Biases —And What We Can Do by Alex Edmans (Penguin Random House)
• Negotiation Made Simple: A Practical Guide for Solving Problems, Building Relationships, and Delivering the Deal by John Lowry (HarperCollins Leadership)
• Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well by Amy C. Edmondson (Simon Acumen)
• Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection by Charles Duhigg (Random House)
• The Algorithm: How AI Decides Who Gets Hired, Monitored, Promoted, and Fired and Why We Need to Fight Back Now by Hilke Schellmann (Hachette Books)
• The Digital Transformation Roadmap: Rebuild Your Organization for Continuous Change by David L. Rogers (Columbia Business School Publishing)
• The Skill Code: How to Save Human Ability in an Age of Intelligent Machines by Matt Beane (Harper Business)

The judges were led by Alan Deutschman, professor and Reynolds Endowed Chair of Business Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno, and Rebecca Baker, editor at large at Bloomberg Industry Group.

“It’s encouraging to see so much excellent work being done in the full-length book format,” said Deutschman. “Congratulations to all the authors and their publishing teams.”

“The number of high-quality submissions made selecting finalists a difficult task, but these entries stood out for their insightful reporting and sharp writing,” said Baker. “They are truly worthy of recognition.”

The winning authors from each category will be awarded a $1,000 cash prize and finalists from each category will receive $500. The results will be announced later this fall.