The Shortlist for the 2018 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year
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September 26, 2018
Six finalists for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year have been announced.
For the past fourteen years, The Financial Times (first with Goldman Sachs, and now with McKinsey & Company) has been handing out its yearly honor to "a work which provides the most compelling and enjoyable insight into modern business issues." On September 14th, FT & McKinsey announced the shortlist for their 2018 Business Book of the Year Award, whittling down their longlist of fifteen books to a final six. Writing of the finalists, FT management editor Andrew Hill (the author of a terrific book, Leadership in the Headlines, himself) stated that the very "future of capitalism … dominates the shortlist for this year’s Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year."
The six books that made the final cut are:
- Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou, Knopf
- The Billionaire Raj: A Journey Through India's New Gilded Age by James Crabtree, Tim Duggan Books
- Capitalism in America: A History by Alan Greenspan and Adrian Wooldridge, Penguin Press
- Give People Money: How a Universal Basic Income Would End Poverty, Revolutionize Work, and Remake the World by Annie Lowrey, Crown
- The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy, by Mariana Mazzucato, PublicAffairs
- New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World—And How to Make It Work for You by Henry Timms & Jeremy Heimans, Doubleday
It's a impressive list. The judging panel, chaired by FT editor Lionel Barber, is impressive, as well. It includes:
- Mitchell Baker, Chairwoman, Mozilla
- Mohamed El-Erian, Chief Economic Advisor, Allianz, (BBYA Winner, 2008, When Markets Collide)
- Herminia Ibarra, The Charles Handy Professor of Organisational Behaviour, London Business School
- Rik Kirkland, Partner and Director of Publishing, McKinsey & Company
- Randall Kroszner, Norman R. Bobins Professor of Economics, University of Chicago Booth School of Business
- Dambisa Moyo, Global Economist and Author, Non-Executive Director, Barrick Gold, Barclays and Chevron
- Shriti Vadera, Chairman, Santander UK; Senior Independent Director, BHP Billiton and Non-Executive Director, AstraZeneca
Of the judges' deliberations and final decision, Andrew Hill writes:
Lionel Barber, FT editor and chair of the judges, praised the finalists … for making “complex ideas accessible with riveting narrative, fine writing and in-depth research.” He said this year’s books posed “hard questions, from the boardroom to the shop floor”.
Rik Kirkland, McKinsey partner and a member of the judging panel, said: “What’s striking is how varied both the voices and topics on this year’s shortlist are …. [The books] should help political and corporate leaders struggling with the good, the bad, and the ugly of creative destruction.”
The winner of the Business Book of the Year Award 2018 will be awarded £30,000, with £10,000 going to the authors of each of the remaining books on the shortlist.
Previous Business Book of the Year winners include:
- Amy Goldstein for Janesville: An American Story (2017)
- Sebastian Mallaby for The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan (2016)
- Martin Ford for Rise of the Robots (2015)
- Thomas Piketty for Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014)
- Brad Stone for The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon (2013)
- Steve Coll for Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power (2012)
- Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo for Poor Economics (2011)
- Raghuram Rajan for Fault Lines (2010)
- Liaquat Ahamed for The Lords of Finance (2009)
- Mohamed El-Erian for When Markets Collide (2008)
- William D. Cohan for The Last Tycoons (2007)
- James Kynge for China Shakes the World (2006)
- Thomas Friedman for The World is Flat (2005)
To learn more, visit ft.com/bookaward.
