FT/McKinsey judges pick six finalists for Business Book of the Year

Six books have been selected as finalists for the Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year, writes Andrew Hill of the Financial Times.

Hill writes, “The judges praised the high quality of the longlist of 15 titles, from which they selected six finalists:

• The World for Sale, by Javier Blas and Jack Farchy, former FT journalists, tells the story of how a group of international commodity trading houses rode the commodity boom.
• Empire of Pain, by Patrick Radden Keefe, explores the links between the Sackler family and the global epidemic of opioid addiction through the rise and fall of Purdue Pharma, a company owned by two of the Sackler brothers and their families.
• The Conversation, by Robert Livingston, examines how to turn difficult discussions about race, at work and in society in general, into a meaningful promotion of change and racial justice.
• The New Climate War, by climatologist Michael E Mann, is a polemic against climate “inactivists” and lays out systemic measures to combat the global problem of climate change.
• This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends, by Nicole Perlroth, analyses the threat posed by the arms race between cyber criminals, spies and hackers fighting to infiltrate essential computer systems.
• The Aristocracy of Talent, by Adrian Wooldridge, is a wide-ranging analysis of the backlash against meritocracy, which makes the controversial case for a revival of competition according to talent.

The finalists were announced at an online event on September 23 by Virginia Simmons, McKinsey’s managing partner, UK, Ireland and Israel.

Roula Khalaf, chair of judges and editor of the FT, praised an “excellent shortlist” that “tackles many of the pressing issues facing business today.'”

Read more here.