The 2018 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards Big Ideas & New Perspectives Book Giveaway

We have been dedicating our recent giveaways to the books on the longlist for the 2018 800-CEO-READ Business Book of the Year.

In our final week, we have the books we chose as the best in the Big Ideas & New Perspectives category, which are listed below along with the publishers' descriptions. You can find our marketing director Blyth Meier's take on the books as she takes readers Inside the Longlist.

Each of this week's winners will receive one copy of all five books in the Big Ideas & New Perspectives category.

21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari, Spiegel & Grau

In Sapiens, he explored our past; in Homo Deus he looked to our future. Now, one of the most innovative thinkers on the planet turns to the present to make sense of today’s most pressing issues.

How do computers and robots change the meaning of being human? How do we deal with the epidemic of fake news? Are nations and religions still relevant? What should we teach our children? 21 Lessons for the 21st Century is a probing and visionary investigation into today’s most urgent issues as we move into the unchartered territory of the future. As technology advances faster than our understanding of it, as hacking becomes a tactic of war, and as the world feels more polarized than ever, Yuval Noah Harari addresses the challenge of navigating life in the face of constant and disorienting change and raises the important questions we need to ask ourselves in order to survive.

In twenty-one accessible chapters that are both provocative and profound, Harari builds on the ideas explored in his previous books, untangling political, technological, social, and existential issues and offering advice on how to prepare for a very different future from the world we live in. How can we retain freedom of choice when Big Data is watching us? What will the future workforce look like and how should we ready ourselves for it? How should we deal with the threat of terrorism? Why is liberal democracy in crisis?

Harari’s unique ability to make sense of where we have come from and where we are going has captured the imaginations of millions of readers around the world. Here he invites readers to consider values, meaning, and personal engagement in a world full of noise and uncertainty. In such a world deluged with irrelevant information, clarity is power. The ability of 21 Lessons for the 21st Century to present complex contemporary challenges clearly and accessibly makes it essential reading.

Give People Money: How a Universal Basic Income Would End Poverty, Revolutionize Work, and Remake the World by Annie Lowrey, Crown

A brilliantly reported, global look at universal basic income—the idea of giving every citizen an annual stipend, no questions asked—and why, in an age of rapid automation, it might just be our best hope

The second industrial revolution is coming. Advances in artificial intelligence are about to cause the greatest social upheaval we’ve seen in centuries. Within the next decade, 3.5 million truck drivers will likely be replaced by self-driving trucks. Factory workers, even many white-collar professionals, will be replaced by robots. What can we do when there’s less work in the future? Surprisingly, an idea first championed by Thomas Paine has been revived by an unlikely group of Bernie leftists, feminists, union organizers, Nobel Prize-winning economists, Charles Murray-style conservatives, and Silicon Valley libertarians. It can be summed up in three simple words: give people money. Attach as few strings as possible. Promise it to anyone whose income falls below a certain level, for whatever reason. Or better yet, just give it to everyone.

In this sparkling and informative book, economics writer Annie Lowrey gives us the first thoroughly reported, global investigation of universal basic income (UBI), which many economists believe could end decades of income inequality and restore social stability and mobility. Lowrey travels to Korea, Kenya, Finland, and many other places to reveal the promises and challenges of UBI, and the prospects for a country like the United States. What’s clear is that millions of lives will soon be upended, and doing nothing is no longer an option. Give People Money paints a terrifying, possibly exhilarating picture of how the future could unfold.

The Job: Work and Its Future in a Time of Radical Change by Ellen Ruppel Shell, Currency

Critically acclaimed journalist Ellen Ruppel Shell uncovers the true cost—political, economic, social, and personal—of America’s mounting anxiety over jobs, and what we can do to regain control over our working lives.

Since 1973, our productivity has grown almost six times faster than our wages. Most of us rank so far below the top earners in the country that the “winners” might as well inhabit another planet. But work is about much more than earning a living. Work gives us our identity, and a sense of purpose and place in this world. And yet, work as we know it is under siege.

Through exhaustive reporting and keen analysis, The Job reveals the startling truths and unveils the pervasive myths that have colored our thinking on one of the most urgent issues of our day: how to build good work in a globalized and digitalized world where middle class jobs seem to be slipping away. Traveling from deep in Appalachia to the heart of the Midwestern rust belt, from a struggling custom clothing maker in Massachusetts to a thriving co-working center in Minnesota, she marshals evidence from a wide range of disciplines to show how our educational system, our politics, and our very sense of self have been held captive to and distorted by outdated notions of what it means to get and keep a good job. We read stories of sausage makers, firefighters, zookeepers, hospital cleaners; we hear from economists, computer scientists, psychologists, and historians. The book’s four sections take us from the challenges we face in scoring a good job today to work’s infinite possibilities in the future. Work, in all its richness, complexity, rewards and pain, is essential for people to flourish. Ellen Ruppel Shell paints a compelling portrait of where we stand today, and points to a promising and hopeful way forward.

New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World—And How to Make It Work for You by Jeremy Heimans & Henry Timms, Doubleday

The definitive guide to spreading ideas, building movements, and leaping ahead in our chaotic, connected age. Get the book New York Times columnist David Brooks calls “the best window I’ve seen into this new world.”

Why do some leap ahead while others fall behind in our chaotic, connected age? In New Power, Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms confront the biggest stories of our time—the rise of mega-platforms like Facebook and Uber; the out-of-nowhere victories of Obama and Trump; the unexpected emergence of movements like #MeToo—and reveal what’s really behind them: the rise of “new power.”

For most of human history, the rules of power were clear: power was something to be seized and then jealously guarded. This “old power” was out of reach for the vast majority of people. But our ubiquitous connectivity makes possible a different kind of power. “New power” is made by many. It is open, participatory, and peer-driven. It works like a current, not a currency—and it is most forceful when it surges. The battle between old and new power is determining who governs us, how we work, and even how we think and feel.

New Power shines fresh light on the cultural phenomena of our day, from #BlackLivesMatter to the Ice Bucket Challenge to Airbnb, uncovering the new power forces that made them huge. Drawing on examples from business, activism, and pop culture, as well as the study of organizations like Lego, NASA, Reddit, and TED, Heimans and Timms explain how to build new power and channel it successfully. They also explore the dark side of these forces: the way ISIS has co-opted new power to monstrous ends, and the rise of the alt-right’s “intensity machine.”

In an era increasingly shaped by new power, this groundbreaking book offers us a new way to understand the world—and our role in it.

Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas, Knopf

An insider’s groundbreaking investigation of how the global elite’s efforts to “change the world” preserve the status quo and obscure their role in causing the problems they later seek to solve.

Former New York Times columnist Anand Giridharadas takes us into the inner sanctums of a new gilded age, where the rich and powerful fight for equality and justice any way they can—except ways that threaten the social order and their position atop it. We see how they rebrand themselves as saviors of the poor; how they lavishly reward “thought leaders” who redefine “change” in winner-friendly ways; and how they constantly seek to do more good, but never less harm. We hear the limousine confessions of a celebrated foundation boss; witness an American president hem and haw about his plutocratic benefactors; and attend a cruise-ship conference where entrepreneurs celebrate their own self-interested magnanimity.

Giridharadas asks hard questions: Why, for example, should our gravest problems be solved by the unelected upper crust instead of the public institutions it erodes by lobbying and dodging taxes? He also points toward an answer: Rather than rely on scraps from the winners, we must take on the grueling democratic work of building more robust, egalitarian institutions and truly changing the world. A call to action for elites and everyday citizens alike.