Financial crisis dominates business book shortlist

(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-09-17 08:57
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The financial crisis dominated the shorlist of six books nominated for the 2010 Business Book of the Year Award announced on Thursday.

Among the nominees is Michael Lewis for "The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine," in which he attempts to trace the origins of the meltdown.

The book comes just over 20 years after his international bestseller "Liar's Poker," in which he sought to expose the greed of the City and Wall Street in the 1980s as a kind of cautionary tale.

Other topics tackled by authors on the shortlist include the success of the social networking website Facebook and the art of making better choices.

"This year's shortlist combines compelling narrative with trenchant analysis of the big questions facing the business and financial world, two years on from the collapse of Lehman Brothers," said Lionel Barber, editor of the Financial Times.

"The standard of writing is high and the insights into the causes and consequences of the global financial crisis are laid bare."

The winner of the award, sponsored by the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs and worth 30,000 pounds ($46,560), will be announced on October 27 in New York.

Following is the full shortlist:

- "The Art of Choosing" by Sheena Iyengar (Little, Brown, Twelve/Hachette Group)

- "The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World" by David Kirkpatrick (Simon & Schuster)

- "The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine" by Michael Lewis (Allen Lane/Penguin Press UK, WW Norton & Co US)

- "More Money than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite" by Sebastian Mallaby (Bloomsbury, Penguin Press)

- "Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy" by Raghuram Rajan (Princeton University Press)

- "Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System - and Themselves" by Andrew Ross Sorkin (Allen Lane/Penguin Press UK, Viking/Penguin US).