FINANCIAL TIMES AND MCKINSEY ANNOUNCE SHORTLIST FOR 2014 BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD

The Financial Times and McKinsey & Company today publish the shortlist for the 2014 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award. Now in its tenth year, the award is an essential calendar fixture for authors and the global business community alike and recognises a title that provides the most compelling and enjoyable insight into modern business issues.

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 (Times Books/Henry Holt)

·         The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee (W. W. Norton Ltd)

·         Creativity, Inc. Overcoming the Unseen Forces that Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull (Bantam Press/Transworld Publishers (UK), Random House (US)

·         Hack Attack: How the Truth Caught up with Rupert Murdoch by Nick Davies Chatto & Windus (UK), Faber & Faber (US)

·         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 (University of Chicago Press)

·         Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty (Belknap Press/Harvard University Press)

Lionel Barber, editor of the Financial Times, said: “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. 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.”

Dominic Barton, global managing director of McKinsey & Company, added: “The range of topics and quality of insights covered by this year’s books is as inspiring as it is enlightening.”

The judging panel, chaired by Lionel Barber, includes:

·         Steve Coll, Dean of the School of Journalism at Columbia University in New York; Staff Writer, The New Yorker magazine

·         Steven Denning, Chairman, General Atlantic LLC

·         Mohamed El-Erian, Member, Allianz International Executive Board and Chief Economic Advisor to its Management Board; Chairman, President Obama’s Global Development Council

·         Herminia Ibarra, Cora Chaired Professor of Leadership and Learning Professor of Organizational Behavior, Insead

·         Rik Kirkland, Partner and Director of Publishing McKinsey & Company

·         Shriti Vadera, Director of Shriti Vadera Ltd, Non Executive Director of BHP Billiton and AstraZeneca

The winner will be announced at a dinner ceremony on 11 November in London, co-hosted by Lionel Barber and Dominic Barton. Tony Hall, Director-General of the BBC will give the keynote speech. The winner of the Business Book of the Year Award 2014 will be awarded £30,000, and £10,000 will be awarded to each of the remaining shortlisted books.

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); 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); and Thomas Friedman, as the inaugural award winner in 2005, for The World is Flat.

To learn more about the award, visit ft.com/bookaward and follow the conversation at #BBYA14.