The 2016 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards Longlist

There is no getting around the incredible amount of work this time of year brings to 800-CEO-READ. Not only are we in peak publishing season, it is also our awards season—and we do all of the reading, reflection, arguing, and overall judging ourselves—together. This year was even more arduous, because we made it a point to get a greater number of books, from a wider array of publishers, imprints, and authors, than ever before. And we succeeded in that. Submissions were up 52 percent over last year. Our General Manager, Sally Haldorson, explains why that was an important goal for us, and what that effort has yielded:

We set big goals for this year's awards, reorienting our categories to allow for a greater variety of publishers which in turn made room for a wider range of topics and a more diverse collection of voices. Greater diversity leads to broader representation, and because we believe that books remain the most effective purveyors of ideas that can impact both businesses and workers for the better, we are pleased to present this varied and exciting list of the year's best books, each one of them capable of changing minds and cultures alike.

Our Editorial Director, Dylan Schleicher, added that:

While speed, innovation, big data, and disruption are the business buzzwords of the day, the best books of 2016 argue for a more considered and considerate, human-centered, inclusive, and deliberately constructive approach to business. Change is in the air and technology is on the rise, but business is still a human pursuit, and should be humane. In a media climate dominated by Twitterstorms and sound bites, it is important to dive deeper into the issues and inform ourselves more fully before taking action. These books help do that.

And that is why we feel the work we put into the awards this time of year is so important, and so worth it. The conversations that swirl around the office, the number of books and ideas that are passed around make the place intoxicating. It's like we're running a sprint and a marathon at the same time, and while we're always intellectually exhausted at the end of it all, we're also excited to tell the world about what we've found, and figure out how we can implement those ideas here at 800-CEO-READ.

Thanks to all the publishers, authors, editors, publicists, designers, and everyone else in publishing that makes what we do possible, and this time of year so exhilarating. 

LEADERSHIP & STRATEGY

• The Founder’s Mentality: How to Overcome the Predictable Crises of Growth by Chris Zook & James Allen, Harvard Business Review Press
• Off-Centered Leadership: The Dogfish Head Guide to Motivation, Collaboration and Smart Growth by Sam Calagione, Wiley
• Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets by Al Ramadan, Dave Peterson, Christopher Lochhead, Kevin Maney, Harper Business
• Scaling Lean: Mastering the Key Metrics for Startup Growth by Ash Maurya, Portfolio
• Simply Brilliant: How Great Organizations Do Ordinary Things in Extraordinary Ways by William C. Taylor, Portfolio

MANAGEMENT & WORKPLACE CULTURE

• Communication the Cleveland Clinic Way: How to Drive a Relationship-Centered Strategy for Superior Patient Experience, edited by Adrienne Boissy, MD and Timothy Gilligan, MD, McGraw-Hill Education
• An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey, Harvard Business School Press
• Feminist Fight Club: An Office Survival Manual for a Sexist Workplace by Jessica Bennett, HarperWave
• Under New Management: How Leading Organizations Are Upending Business as Usual by David Burkus, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Winning Well: A Manager’s Guide to Getting Results—Without Losing Your Soul by Karin Hurt and David Dye, Amacom

MARKETING & SALES

• Hug Your Haters: How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers by Jay Baer, Portfolio
• Martketing: The Heart and the Brain of Branding by Javier Sanchez Lamelas, LID Publishing
• Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as If Your Life Depended on It by Chris Voss with Tahl Raz, Harper Business
• The Power of Fifty Bits: The New Science of Turning Good Intentions Into Positive Results by Bob Nease, Harper Business
• Small Data: The Tiny Clues That Uncover Huge Trends by Martin Lindstrom, St. Martin's Press

INNOVATION & CREATIVITY

• Art Thinking: How to Carve Out Creative Space in a World of Schedules, Budgets, and Bosses by Amy Whitaker, Harper Business
• Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg, Random House
• Utopia Is Creepy: And Other Provocations by Nicholas Carr, W.W. Norton
• Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World by Steven Johnson, Riverhead Books
• You Got This!: Unleash Your Awesomeness, Find Your Path, and Change Your World by Maya S. Penn, North Star Way

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT & HUMAN BEHAVIOR

• Becoming Wise: An Inquiry Into the Mystery and Art of Living by Krista Tippett, Penguin Press
• The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It… Every Time by Maria Konnikova, Viking
• Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport, Grand Central Publishing
• How to Have a Good Day: Harness the Power of Behavioral Science to Transform Your Working Life by Caroline Webb, Crown Business
• Joy on Demand: The Art of Discovering the Happiness Within by Chade Meng Tan, HarperOne

CURRENT EVENTS & PUBLIC AFFAIRS

• Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond, Crown
• Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World by Timothy Garton Ash, Yale University Press
• Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business by Rana Foroohar, Crown Business
• Shadow Courts: The Tribunals That Rule Global Trade by Haley Sweetland Edwards, Columbia Global Reports
• Who Cooked Adam Smith's Dinner?: A Story of Women and Economics by Katrine Marcal, Pegasus Books

NARRATIVE & BIOGRAPHY

• Breaking Rockefeller: The Incredible Story of the Ambitious Rivals Who Toppled an Oil Empire by Peter B. Doran, Viking
• Door to Door: The Magnificent, Maddening, Mysterious World of Transportation by Edward Humes, Harper
• How to Make a Spaceship: A Band of Renegades, an Epic Race, and the Birth of Private Spaceflight by Julian Guthrie, Penguin Press
• The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan by Sebastian Mallaby, Penguin Press
• The Network: The Battle for the Airwaves and the Birth of the Communications Age by Scott Woolley, Ecco Press

BIG IDEAS & NEW PERSPECTIVES

• The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness by Todd Rose, HarperOne
• Magic and Loss: The Internet as Art by Virginia Heffernan, Simon & Schuster
• The Smartest Places on Earth: Why Rustbelts Are the Emerging Hotspots of Global Innovation by Antoine van Agtmael and Fred Bakker, PublicAffairs
• Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity by Douglas Rushkoff, Portfolio
• What Works: Gender Equality by Design by Iris Bohnet, Belknap Press

We'll announce the winners of each of these categories, which make up the shortlist for the overall book of the year, on December 6th.   

We will announce the Business Book of the Year, and the winner of the 3nd Annual Jack Covert Award for Contribution to the Business Book Industry, on January 12th in New York City.

You can stay tuned here for both of those announcements. 

Save

Save