Raghuram Rajan’s Fault Lines was awarded the 2010 Finanical Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of The Year honors Wednesday night.
Books trying to make sense of the economic circumstances dominated the short list which included Andrew Ross Sorkin’s Too Big To Fail, Michael Lewis’ The Big Short, and Sebastian Mallaby’s More Money Than God. The Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick and The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyengar rounded out the list.
The publisher Princeton University Press describes Fault Lines as:
“Rajan shows how the individual choices that collectively brought about the economic meltdown–made by bankers, government officials, and ordinary homeowners–were rational responses to a flawed global financial order in which the incentives to take on risk are incredibly out of step with the dangers those risks pose. He traces the deepening fault lines in a world overly dependent on the indebted American consumer to power global economic growth and stave off global downturns. He exposes a system where America’s growing inequality and thin social safety net create tremendous political pressure to encourage easy credit and keep job creation robust, no matter what the consequences to the economy’s long-term health; and where the U.S. financial sector, with its skewed incentives, is the critical but unstable link between an overstimulated America and an underconsuming world.”
Fault Lines is certainly gaining attention this morning. The Amazon Sales Rank is currently #104 and is on their Movers and Shakers list at #5.
Further Coverage:
- Video Interview with Rajan from Financial Times
- Daily Finance article with first hand coverage from the Pierre Hotel event
- The full list of nominees for the 2010 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of The Year