FT names finalists for business book of the year

The Financial Times and McKinsey & Co. announced Wednesday the finalists for the 2014 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award.

Now in its tenth year, the award recognizes a title that provides the most compelling and enjoyable insight into modern business issues.

“This year’s shortlist will inspire readers to be creative thinkers and to sharpen their understanding of the most important trends shaping our world today,” said Financial Times editor Lionel Barber in a statement. “From income inequality to privacy in the internet age, the provocative questions raised by this year’s titles have been addressed with originality, depth of research and lively writing.”

For this year’s shortlist, the distinguished judges have chosen the six most influential business books in 2014:

• “Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security, and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance,” by Julia Angwin;
• “The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies,” by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee;
• “Creativity, Inc. Overcoming the Unseen Forces that Stand in the Way of True Inspiration,” by Ed Catmull;
• “Hack Attack: How the Truth Caught up with Rupert Murdoch,” by Nick Davies;
• “House of Debt: How They (and You) Caused the Great Recession, and How We Can Prevent It from Happening Again,” by Atif Mian and Amir Sufi; and
• “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” by Thomas Piketty.

Previous Business Book of the Year winners include: Brad Stone for “The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon” (2013); Steve Coll for “Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power” (2012); and Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo for “Poor Economics” (2011).