The FT/Goldman Sachs Book Award Longlist

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.