getAbstract International Book Award

About the getAbstract International Book Award

Who are the giants of modern thought? What impact do they have on the business agenda?

Each year, getAbstract assesses more than 10,000 English and German non-fiction books. From these, it selects 10 finalists.

Since 2001, getAbstract has awarded the prize to several esteemed authors, including Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Robert J. Shiller, Benoît Mandelbrot and Chris Anderson, as well as their publishers. Below you'll find the outstanding winners of this prestigious award.

The official awards ceremony takes place at the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany and is open to the public.

getAbstract International Book Award 2009

Animal Spirits
A provocative psychology-based proposal to rethink the fundamental principles of economics.

George A. Akerlof, winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics, is a professor at the University of California Berkeley. Robert J. Shiller, best-selling author of Irrational Exuberance and The Subprime Solution, teaches economics at Yale University.

The Ascent of Money
Readable history explores the role of finance over time – from credit markets in Renaissance, Italy, to mayhem on Wall Street

Niall Ferguson is Laurence A. Tisch professor of history at Harvard University, senior research fellow of Jesus College, Oxford University, and a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His books include Paper and Iron, The House of Rothschild, The Pity of War, The Cash Nexus, Empire, Colossus and The War of the World.

getAbstract International Book Award 2008

Economic Facts and Fallacies
Avoid the common economic fallacies that trip even the most careful thinkers.

Thomas Sowell is scholar-in-residence at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is also the author of Basic Economics.

Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets
Do-gooders, empire builders and world changers, beware. We're on to you.

William Bonner is president and CEO of a financial-newsletter company. He created the Daily Reckoning, a contrarian financial newsletter, and co-authored Financial Reckoning Day and Empire of Debt. Lila Rajiva is a journalist and author of The Language of Empire.

getAbstract International Book Award 2007

The Black Swan
Open your eyes to many highly unlikely but important events that shape the world - and your life.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a former derivatives trader, is Dean's Professor in the Sciences of Uncertainty at the University of Massachusetts and teaches at New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. He also wrote Fooled by Randomness.

The Halo Effect
How the usual way companies measure success leads managers astray - and what sustained success really looks like.

Phil Rosenzweig, Ph.D., is a professor at IMD, the International Institute for Management Development, in Lausanne, Switzerland. He holds a Ph.D. from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and taught at the Harvard Business School.

getAbstract International Book Award 2006

The Long Tail
Online sellers can offer infinite variety to niche buyers, giving cyber-products a longer, more powerful life: the long tail.

Chris Anderson is the editor of Wired magazine, which he has led to five National Magazine Award nominations. In 2005, he was named Advertising Age's editor of the year. He previously worked atThe Economist, Nature and Science magazines. Acceptance Speech.

©Gabriela Hasbun

Chasing Daylight
How KPMG CEO Eugene O''Kelly used the last three months of his life to learn how to live - a heartfelt farewell.

At 53, Eugene O'Kelly was chairman and CEO of KPMG. A lifetime New Yorker, he started with KPMG as an assistant accountant in 1972 and worked his way to the top, becoming U.S. CEO in April 2002. Andrew Postman assisted in writing this book. Philip Ruppel edited it. Corinne O'Kelly wrote the last chapter.

getAbstract International Book Award 2005

Blue Ocean Strategy
To be in the same boat as Starbucks and Curves, sail your "blue ocean strategy" into uncharted, uncontested waters.

W. Chan Kim is a professor of strategy and international management at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France. Previously, he taught at the University of Michigan Business School. He has written for numerous business journals, the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, and is a founder of the Value Innovation Network. Renée Mauborgne is a Distinguished Fellow at INSEAD, where she is a professor of strategy and management. She is also a Fellow of the World Economic Forum and published numerous articles on strategy and managing multinational corporations.

©John Abbott

getAbstract International Book Award 2004

The (Mis)behavior of Markets
Just how risky is the market? Before risking your bottom line on orthodox thinking, read these unconventional heresies.

Benoit Mandelbrot, the inventor of fractal geometry, is Sterling Professor of Mathematical Sciences at Yale University and a Fellow Emeritus at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Laboratory. Richard L. Hudson is former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal's European edition.

getAbstract International Book Award 2003

The New Financial Order
Break new ground with six proposals for harnessing the power of information technology to distribute economic risk.

Robert J. Shiller is the Stanley B. Resor Professor of Economics at Yale University. He is the author of Macro Markets, which won the first annual Paul A. Samuelson Award of TIAA-CREF, and Irrational Exuberance, which was a New York Times bestseller.

Leading Geeks
"Geeks" are independent, complex, unsocial. Congratulations, you get to motivate them. Geekwork is ambiguous, erratic, costly. Even more congratulations, you get to manage it.

For more than 15 years, management consultant Paul Glen has advised clients in the U.S., Europe and Asia on building effective technology organizations. He served as an adjunct faculty member in the MBA programs at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business and at Loyola Marymount University. Prior to founding C2 Consulting, he was western regional manager for SEI Information Technology, a national IT consultancy. He is a self-described "geek."

getAbstract International Book Award 2002

The End of Management
Democracy - coming soon to a company near you.

Kenneth Cloke is director of the Center for Dispute Resolution, and a mediator, arbitrator, consultant, and trainer. Joan Goldsmith is an organizational consultant and educator specializing in leadership development and organizational change. Cloke and Goldsmith draw on more than 30 years of practical experience in organizational consulting with hundreds of organizations. They are co-authors of four previous books, including Resolving Conflicts at Work.

getAbstract International Book Award 2001

Money and Power
This history of business: From the spread of the steam engine to the making of Microsoft millionaires.

Howard Means has written or co-written several books, and is a senior editor at Washingtonian magazine. His books include The 500 Year Delta, Colin Powell: A Biography and The Visionary's Handbook, as well as the novel, C.S.A. His books have been published in more than ten countries and have appeared on business bestseller lists. He won two William Allen White medals for writing. David Grubin, author of the foreword, is a producer, director, writer and cinematographer who has won eight Emmy awards and has produced more than 100 films. Grubin received a Guggenheim Fellowship and was a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College. He produced Money and Power, the PBS documentary that was the basis for this book.

The Pied Pipers of Wall Street
Wall Street Research: Analysis or Advertising? You decide.

Benjamin Mark Cole helped launch the daily financial paper Investor's Daily (now Investor's Business Daily). For 20 years, he has been a leading financial reporter, writing for U.S. News & World Report, The Los Angeles Herald Examiner, and the Los Angeles Business Journal. He currently writes the "Wall Street West" column in the Los Angeles Business Journal.