Sebastian Mallaby wins 2016 FT business book award

A colourful and exhaustive biography of Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, is this year’s Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year.

The Man Who Knew, by Sebastian Mallaby, is the 12th winner of the £30,000 award, which goes to the “most compelling and enjoyable” title of the year.

It is the first biography to win the prize, although Mr Greenspan’s autobiography, The Age of Turbulence, was shortlisted in 2007, the year before the financial crisis raised serious questions about the central banker’s legacy.

“The Man Who Knew is an impressive work of scholarship,” Lionel Barber, editor of the FT and chair of the book award judges, said. “It’s a masterpiece of political economy and, above all, it’s a great and enjoyable read.”

Mr Mallaby’s 800-page book was published in October by Bloomsbury and Penguin Press, and was hailed as “exceptional” in an FT review. It came up against strong competition from five other shortlisted books tackling the world’s critical economic and management challenges — from the US productivity gap to persistent gender imbalances.

Another of the judges praised the winning book for its “meticulous depth, which reveals all of [Mr Greenspan’s] human qualities and professional contradictions in a lucid way”.

Mr Mallaby accepted the award at a dinner in London on November 22, where the guest speaker was Dido Harding, chief executive of TalkTalk, the UK telecoms group.

Each of the other shortlisted titles wins £10,000. They are: The Rise and Fall of American Growth by economist Robert Gordon; What Works, Iris Bohnet’s guide to how organisations can help offset unconscious bias against women and manage diversity; Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott’s The 100-Year Life, on the threats and opportunities of growing longevity; Makers and Takers, Rana Foroohar’s critique of the dominance of high finance; and Alibaba, Duncan Clark’s inside account of the rise of the Chinese internet company and its founder Jack Ma.

In the continuing search for business authors of the future, the FT and McKinsey also presented the Bracken Bower Prize to Nora Rosendahl for her proposal for a book called Mental Meltdown, analysing increasing rates of burnout, exhaustion and stress, particularly among millennials. The £15,000 Bracken Bower Prize goes to the best business book proposal by a writer aged under 35. A number of previous finalists have gone on to have their outlines accepted for publication.