Finalists named for best business book

Judges have selected six finalists for the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award.

Andrew Hill of the Financial Times writes, “Michael Lewis’s The Big Short was praised for its ‘human and accessible’ take on the turmoil, via the stories of the dysfunctional and maverick investors who profited from the coming disaster. More Money than God, Sebastian Mallaby’s ‘fascinating analysis’ of the rise of hedge funds, attracted support. Andrew Ross Sorkin’s Too Big To Fail – ‘an outstanding piece of narrative reporting’, in Mr Ahamed’s words – was bound to be a contender, along with Fault Lines, Raghuram Rajan’s insight into the flaws in economic policy, which G20 adviser Shriti Vadera called ‘thought-provoking and lucid.’

“In the heat of this contest, other titles started to melt away, including Adam Haslett’s Union Atlantic, only the second novel to make the award’s longlist, and All the Devils are Here, the soon-to-be-published anatomy of the subprime crisis by Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera.

“That left two slots. David Kirkpatrick’s The Facebook Effect – on the origins and prospects of the social networking company – earned one place. Sheena Iyengar’s intriguing inquiry into human behaviour The Art of Choosing took the other, edging out John Cassidy’s How Markets Fail.”

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Joey says:
September 16, 2010 at 12:37 pm
Kinda surprised Rajan's book scored so well; I get the sense most people were expecting big things-- a macro-economic counter-part to the micro-economic frame of Too Big to Fail-- but the book is heavy on the jargon. Thought-provoking, yes, but lucid? Only to other economics professors. Other readers need Excedrin after going through it.