Posting the strategy + business list before the Thanksgiving break reminded me that we haven’t seen quite as many “best of 2011″ business lists at this point of year as we have in years past. Beside the Goldman Sachs/FT award and s+b‘s list, The only two I’ve seen have come from booksellers—Amazon and Hudson.

Amazon’s Best Books of 2011 were announced earlier this month. The books in the Business & Investing category are:

• In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives by Steven Levy, Simon & Schuster
• Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul by Howard Schultz, Rodale Press
• EntreLeadership: 20 Years of Practical Business Wisdom from the Trenches by Dave Ramsey, Howard Books
• Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck–Why Some Thrive Despite Them All by Jim Collins, HarperBusiness
• Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions by Guy Kawasaki, Portfolio
• The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries, Crown Business
• Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy by Martin Lindstrom, Crown Business
• Endgame: The End of the Debt Supercycle and How It Changes Everything by John Mauldin, John Wiley & Sons
• Disciplined Dreaming: A Proven System to Drive Breakthrough Creativity by Josh Linkner, Jossey-Bass
• Poke the Box by Seth Godin, The Domino Project

But the list of books that would interest a business reader doesn’t end in the business category. It extends into Biographies & Memoirs with Walter Isaacson’s bio of Steve Jobs, and even Joshua Foer’s Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything. Foer’s book also made it in the general Nonfiction category, along with The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick and A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor. The design nerds among us might also enjoy Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfield, which made the Nonfiction list as well.

Hudson Booksellers Best were announced quietly late last month. The Best Business Interest included:

• Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain: How I Went from Gang Member to Multimillionaire Entrepreneur by Ryan Blair with Don Yaeger, Portfolio
• Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World by William D. Cohan, Doubleday Books
• Tell to Win: Connect, Persuade, and Triumph with the Hidden Power of Story by Peter Guber, Crown Business
• Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World by Michael Lewis, W.W. Norton & Company
• The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World by Daniel Yergin, The Penguin Press

Other, less business-centric lists have been announced, such as Publishers Weekly, whose (admittedly long) Nonfiction list includes a smattering of books that would be of interest to the business reader:

• The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick, Pantheon
• Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World by Michael Lewis, W.W. Norton & Company
• The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry by Jon Ronson, Riverhead Books
• The Price of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity by Jeffrey D. Sachs, Random House

There will most likely be many more coming soon. The Economist is making an event out of their list this year, with their first “Books of the Year” festival at London’s SouthBank Centre early next month. We’ll get that list to you when it’s announced, and will keep you updated as more come in, including our own!

strategy + business‘s yearly list of the best business books is always one of the finest. They do something really simple, but simply brilliant, having authors and thinkers who work in each category come in and curate the year’s books with lengthy essays. This always makes it one of the most thorough and thoughtful lists put out every year, and this year is no exception.

First up, we have James O’Toole—co-author, with Warren Bennis and Daniel Goleman, of Transparency: How Leaders Create a Culture of Candor—curating a new and timely category.

On Ethics and Aspirations, and The Good Company Revisited, James O’Toole chose:

• Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul by Howard Schultz with Joanne Gordon, Rodale
• Management Reset: Organizing for Sustainable Effectiveness by Edward E. Lawler III and Christopher G. Worley, with David Creelman, Jossey-Bass
• Higher Ambition: How Great Leaders Create Economic and Social Value by Michael Beer, Russell A. Eisenstat, Nathaniel Foote, Tobias Fredberg, and Flemming Norrgren, Harvard Business Review Press

For Strategy Phil Rosenzweig takes a look at Asking the Right Questions. He chose:

• The Essential Advantage: How to Win with a Capabilities-Driven Strategy by Paul Leinwand and Cesare Mainardi, Harvard Business Review Press
• Staying Power: Six Enduring Principles for Managing Strategy and Innovation in an Uncertain World by Michael A. Cusumano, Oxford University Press
• Good Strategy, Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters by Richard P. Rumelt, Crown Business

The picks in Management, addressing the Battle for Management’s Future by David K. Hurst, were:

• Car Guys vs. Bean Counters: The Battle for the Soul of American Business by Bob Lutz, Portfolio
• Fixing the Game: Bubbles, Crashes, and What Capitalism Can Learn from the NFL by Roger L. Martin, Harvard Business Review Press
• Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure by Tim Harford, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

On Economics, David Warsh ponders… A Dismal Outlook?:

• The Next Convergence: The Future of Economic Growth in a Multispeed World by Michael Spence, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Age of Greed: The Triumph of Finance and the Decline of America, 1970 to the Present by Jeff Madrick, Knopf
• Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius by Sylvia Nasar, Simon & Schuster

In Marketing, books about Marketing Reenvisioned were picked by Catharine P. Taylor:

• We First: How Brands and Consumers Use Social Media to Build a Better World by Simon Mainwaring, Palgrave Macmillan
• Brand Relevance: Making Competitors Irrelevant by David A. Aaker, Jossey-Bass
• The Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuk, HarperBusiness

On Leadership, and Learning to Lead the Old-Fashioned Way by Barbara Kellerman:

• Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow, The Penguin Press
• Colonel Roosevelt by Edmund Morris, Random House
• Decision Points by George W. Bush, Crown Publishing Group

And for Technology, writing about The Ecology of Technology, Michael Schrage chose:

• What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly, Viking
• In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives by Steven Levy, Simon & Schuster
• Final Jeopardy: Man vs. Machine and the Quest to Know Everything Stephen Baker, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

And the pick of the litter, s+b‘s Top Shelf, was:

We’ve been following this list since 2003. You can browse past year’s picks below.

Congratulations are in order for Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo, authors of Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty (and their publishers PublicAffairs), for winning this year’s Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award.

Both professors of economics at MIT, the authors based the book on their more than fifteen years of careful research and analysis of the economics of poverty—and their attempt to find solutions to it. They have worked all over the world during that time conducting randomized control trials that they themselves have pioneered, and come away with what seem to be practical, evidence-backed conclusions and solutions.

In his review of the book and the judges’ decision to elevate it, Andrew Hill of The Financial Times writes:

With much of the developed world racked by crisis and shaken by protest about capitalism’s deficiencies, the judges said co-authors Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo offered a hopeful guide to the way forward. … Of the six shortlisted finalists, Poor Economics had “the potential for the greatest impact,” said one of the judges, Vindi Banga, a former Unilever executive, now a partner with private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice. Mario Monti, economics professor and former European commissioner, said it was “highly relevant” for a world “where the problems of inequality are becoming overriding.”

[...]

The two MIT professors are part of a group of economists known as the “randomistas.” They have used randomised control trials across five continents to test the impact of policies aimed at beating poverty, from the provision of free anti-malaria bed-nets to education subsidies.

Poor Economics maps out a third way between those experts who believe aid does more harm than good, such as William Easterly [author of White Man's Burden and Reinventing Foreign Aid] and Dambisa Moyo [author of Dead Aid and How the West Was Lost], and those who believe the reverse, like Jeffrey Sachs [author of The End of Poverty, Common Wealth and The Price of Civilization].

This year’s keynote speaker, Lord Patten of Barnes added, offering high praise not only for the impact of the book, but for the impact of the award itself:

This prestigious literary award has helped to rescue the concept of “business books” from that pile of volumes at airport terminals which advise you, first, how to make the most of your attributes as a first-class underling, and second, never knowingly to underestimate the taste of the public. This prize, with its distinguished list of past winners, has transformed the whole notion of business literature.

I can’t help but think it would have been a more effective and touching tribute to the book to have someone the authors had worked with to alleviate poverty over the years speak to the quality of their work, but I suppose a British Lord—the last Governor of British Hong Kong, in fact—will do in a pinch.

Regardless of who spoke, though, the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs have yet again picked a fine field of books to choose from and made a worthy choice to lead them. You can find the shortlisted titles and read excerpts from them all online at The Financial Times website. And learn more about Poor Economics and the epic amount of work surrounding it at pooreconomics.com.

The shortlist for the seventh Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Book of the Year has been released. It includes:

• Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo, Public Affairs
• Exorbitant Privilege: The Rise and Fall of the Dollar by Barry Eichengreen, Oxford University Press
• Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier and Happier by Edward L. Glaeser, The Penguin Press
• Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril by Margaret Heffernan, Walker & Company
• Good Strategy, Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters by Richard Rumelt, Crown Business
• The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World by Daniel Yergin, The Penguin Press

The judges have shifted the focus away from the financial crisis with a diverse shortlist … The six finalists, which address future challenges in areas from energy security to global poverty to urban development, edged out a handful of longlisted books that tackle the crisis head-on.

To see who missed the cut, check out this year’s longlist. The winner will be announced at an awards ceremony and dinner in London on November 3. We’ll keep you updated here.

Understandably (looking at the award sponsors), the FT/Goldman Sachs Book Award always tends more toward macroeconomics, high finance and big business. But they always seem to pick well, and I always find books I feel the need to revisit when they announce their list.

Just in case you missed the announcement of the the award’s longlist as I did, it is:

• Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius by Sylvia Nasar, Simon & Schuster
• No Angel: The Secret Life of Bernie Ecclestone by Tom Bower, Faber & Faber
• Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo, PublicAffairs
• Fatal Risk: A Cautionary Tale of AIG’s Corporate Suicide by Roddy Boyd, John Wiley and Sons
• Exorbitant Privilege: The Rise and Fall of the Dollar by Barry Eichengreen, Oxford University Press
• Extreme Money: The Masters of the Universe & The Cult of Risk by Satyajit Das, FT Press
• The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World by Daniel Yergin, Penguin Press
• The Next Convergence: The Future of Economic Growth in a Multispeed World by Michael Spence, Farrar Straus Giroux
• Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters by Richard Rumelt, Crown Business
• That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back by Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum, Farrar Straus Giroux
• Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier and Happier by Edward Glaeser, Penguin Press
• The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust by Diana B. Henriques, Times Books
• Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril by Margaret Heffernan, Walker & Company
• Car Guys vs Bean Counters: The Battle for the Soul of American Business by Bob Lutz, Portfolio

FT‘s Andrew Hill writes of the list:

If there is a theme that links most of the 14 titles on the longlist for the 2011 Business Book of the Year Award it is their authors’ quest to work out how and why companies, governments and their leaders fail—and how not to go wrong in future.

Thomas Friedman has won the award before so it will be interesting to see if he moves on to the shortlist, which will be announced in September. The award’s past winners are:

• Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy by Raghuram G Rajan, Yale University Press (2010)
• Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed, Penguin Press (2009)
• When Markets Collide: Investment Strategies for the Age of Global Economic Change by Mohamed A El-Erian, McGraw-Hill (2008)
• The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Freres & Co. by William D Cohan, Doubleday Books (2007)
• China Shakes the World: A Titan’s Rise and Troubled Future—And the Challenge for America by James Kynge, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (2006)
• The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century by Thomas L. Friedman, Farrar Straus Giroux (2005)

We are currently accepting submissions for our awards. You can find the details and entry form at www.800ceoread.com/bookawards. And for our past winners, head on over to our awards page.

We are now accepting submissions for our annual Business Book Awards! Categories for submission are as follows:

Leadership
Management
Entrepreneurship/Small Business
Finance/Economics
Marketing and Sales
Personal Development
Innovation/Creativity
General Business

Entries are open until October 15, 2011, and all submissions must be books that were, or will be, published within 2011. Winners will be announced in January, 2012.

Full details and the entry form can be found at www.800ceoread.com/bookawards

Good luck to all the entries!

Click here for a recap of last year’s Awards.

Amazon’s books editors have announced their “2011 Best Books of the Year So Far” list. I don’t recall them putting out a mid-year list in the past, but it’s a great idea and they’ve picked some very worthy titles.

Their top ten in the Business & Investing category are:

• Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul by Howard Schultz, Rodale Press
• Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions by Guy Kawasaki, Portfolio
• Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization by David Logan, John King & Halee Fischer-Wright, Harper Paperbacks (the paperback release of the authors’ 2008 book)
• In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives by Steven Levy, Simon & Schuster
• Poke the Box by Seth Godin, The Domino Project – Powered by Amazon
• Disciplined Dreaming: A Proven System to Drive Breakthrough Creativity by Josh Linkner, Jossey-Bass
• We First: How Brands and Consumers Use Social Media to Build a Better World by Simon Mainwaring, Palgrave MacMillan
• The Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuk, HarperBusiness
• Beyond Wealth: The Road Map to a Rich Life by Alexander Green, John Wiley & Sons
• Endgame: The End of the Debt Supercycle and How It Changes Everything by John Mauldin, John Wiley & Sons

On that list, Disciplined Dreaming author Josh Linkner contributed a manifesto to the February issue of ChangeThis, and we have a manifesto from Simon Mainwaring coming on July 6. A few of these books were also Jack Covert Selects when they were released, including Onward, Enchantment, and The Thank You Economy.

There are also books in the general nonfiction category that business readers might find of interest, including:

• Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer, Penguin Press
• The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick, Pantheon Books
• Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN by James Andrew Miller, Little Brown and Company
• The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry by Jon Ronson, Riverhead Books
• Arrival City: How the Largest Migration in History Is Reshaping Our World by Doug Saunders, Pantheon Books

For the editors’ complete list of mid-year favorites, check out Amazon’s Top Books of 2011 (so far).

The call is on for submissions to the 2011 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. From the press release:

Now in its seventh year, the award is firmly established as a feature of the business and publishing calendars. [...] The 2011 award will be decided by a panel of judges, who will select a shortlist of up to six titles in September. They will consider titles published for the first time in the English language between 16 November 2010 and 15 November 2011, spanning the whole range of economics, management, business and finance. [...] The closing date for submissions is June 30 2011.

You can submit your book online or download the submissions rules and forms (a pdf) from FT.com.

We’ve been following the award since they began handing it out in 2005. The list of books they’ve chosen is understandably more high-finance and Wall Street centric than ours picks here at 800-CEO-READ have been (we tend to focus more on small business and entrepreneurship), but beginning with the choice of Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat in their inaugural year, they have always chosen very worthy candidates. The previous winners are:

• Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy by Raghuram G Rajan, Yale University Press (2010)
• Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed, Penguin Press (2009)
• When Markets Collide: Investment Strategies for the Age of Global Economic Change by Mohamed A El-Erian, McGraw-Hill (2008)
• The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Freres & Co. by William D Cohan, Doubleday Books (2007)
• China Shakes the World: A Titan’s Rise and Troubled Future—And the Challenge for America by James Kynge, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (2006)
• The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century by Thomas L. Friedman, Farrar Straus Giroux (2005)

And with Goldman Sachs behind the award, they can afford a fair amount of luxury when handing it out.

This year, the winner of the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award will receive £30,000, while the prize money for up to five other shortlisted authors is £10,000 each. [...] This year’s awards ceremony and dinner—attended by top names from the worlds of finance, economics, business, media and publishing—will take place in London on November 3 2011.

We’ll be calling for submissions to our awards later this Summer, and will keep you updated on the FT/Goldman Sachs Award as they announce their shortlist and winner later this year.