The best in the business
With the US Federal Reserve stepping in to rescue global insurance giant AIG last week, one title must have looked particularly prescient to judges drawing up a shortlist for the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award.
When Markets Collide: Investment Strategies for the Age of Global Economic Change by Mohamed El-Erian contends that the world financial system is in a period of deep change, as emerging economies like China and India bump up against the United States and Europe.
The result is market turmoil, leading to such events as the rescue of AIG and US mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings.
"This bumpy process is nothing less than a collision of markets, where the markets of yesterday collide with those of tomorrow," writes El-Erian, co-CEO of PIMCO, which runs the world's biggest bond fund. An even bigger figure in the financial markets is the subject of another of the six books on the shortlist. Warren Buffett has never written a memoir, but he has given former insurance industry analyst Alice Schroeder unprecedented access to write The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life.
"Life is like a snowball," Schroeder writes, quoting the Oracle of Omaha's famous homespun wisdom. "The important thing is finding wet snow and a long hill."
Cold Steel: The Multibillion Dollar Battle for a Global Industry by Tim Bouquet and Byron Ousey chronicles how Lakshmi Mittal fought for control of Arcelor and transformed the global steel industry via consolidation.
Journalist and historian Misha Glenny spent three years following gun runners in Ukraine, drug syndicates in Canada, cyber-criminals in Brazil and others to write McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld, a tale of the growing shadow economy.
A different kind of shadow economy is the subject of Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy by Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Stanford Law School. Lessig writes that artists who use cutting-edge technology are increasingly coming into conflict with outdated copyright laws that he argues need to be overhauled.
And William Bernstein, an author of books for investors who want to manage their own stock portfolios, takes a look into the past in A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World.
To see how important trade is to our lives, Bernstein imagines a world without it: Italian cuisine without the tomato, or coffee only in its birthplace in Africa.
"At no time has there been a greater need for books that provide an insight into modern business issues," says Lionel Barber, editor of the Financial Times and one of the judges, as the shortlist was announced recently.
The judges will announce the winner in three weeks.