Winners Play By the Rules: Keep Your Moral Compass (FT Press Delivers Elements)

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Where does literature end and fantasy begin? Speaking ahead of publication, the British writer had wondered whether readers might be put off by the surface elements of his story, which follows an elderly couple on a quest through a Dark Ages landscape populated by mythical creatures and shrouded in an amnesia-inducing mist.

His fears were partly realised. She and Ishiguro later patched things up but by then the terms of the discussion around the book were set: Which was a shame, because in many ways this was an entirely characteristic Ishiguro novel — both a study in the unreliability of historical memory that harked back to his earliest works and a meditation on love and mortality that resonated movingly with its predecessor, Never Let Me Go And as the SF elements of that book showed, there is nothing new about Ishiguro experimenting with genre. Indeed, it was noticeable this year that the books that excited readers and prize juries were often those most willing to test the conventions of genre.

Ruth Scurr, similarly, wrought a quiet revolution in historical biography with John Aubrey: And is Svetlana Alexievich , the Belarusian author who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in October for her luminous interview-based books on subjects such as the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster and the Soviet-Afghan war, a journalist or an oral historian? Defying classification, for all that it may complicate the lives of librarians, booksellers and literary editors, is usually a good sign.

Perhaps the clearest example of genre-hopping to be found in was the boom in books by journalists and technology writers on what has long been one of the central concerns of science fiction: Yet there was a marked difference in tone. When we encounter androids in the work of novelists such as Philip K Dick or Isaac Asimov, they are often tragic figures who demand an extension of sympathy: The real ones on the horizon seem like a far more worrying prospect.

Few captured the mood as well as Martin Ford in The Rise of the Robots , the winner of the FT and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award , which painted a bleak picture of the upheavals that would come as ever-greater numbers of even highly skilled workers were displaced by machines. But his was one voice among many: Could we be getting a little ahead of ourselves? It sometimes felt as if the unsettling image of the robot was being made to stand for a host of other trends that worry us: And it was clear in that anxiety about technology extended far beyond artificial intelligence.

Still, the spectacle of Atticus Finch, the saintly lawyer of Mockingbird , succumbing in later life to some of the prejudices he had previously stood against could only stick in the throat in a year when outrage at the failed prosecutions of US policemen charged with murdering unarmed black men has seldom been out of the news. On race in America, two titles in particular stood out: In Britain, political publishing clustered around a curious general election — one that was discussed at the time almost exclusively in terms of the new realities of coalition-building arithmetic but which took a decidedly retro turn: Fittingly, there was a s feel to some of the autumn catalogues: By the autumn it was also becoming clear that this was a year of big bestsellers.

Just for once, that oft-heard lament of dissenting reading group members could well have been justified: For publishers, long accustomed to living under the shadow of the kind of technological disruption so stylishly described by Stephen Witt in his account of the rise of file-sharing, How Music Got Free , this could not have been more welcome. Add to this the British chain Waterstones pulling unwanted Kindles from its shelves and Amazon opening a bricks-and-mortar bookshop and it did seem like the future might not be entirely digital after all.

The stuff of fantasy? We will have to wait and see. What Can be Done? Atkinson is the doyen of those scholars who have focused on trends in inequality over the past half-century. In this important book, he focuses not so much on what has happened or why, but on what to do about it, particularly in the UK. The result is a challenging set of proposals. The Courage to Act: A distinguished scholar of the Great Depression, he was the right man to be in charge of US monetary policy at that time.

Here he gives a compelling account of what he and the Federal Reserve did and why they did it. The book also provides reflections on the lessons. He is insufficiently radical on finance. But his defence of the Fed against its critics is compelling. Crucially, Bourguignon points to some good news: The public sector balance sheet does not only have liabilities. It also has assets. Managing those assets well is at least as important as managing the liabilities.

Here the authors show how big, undervalued and mismanaged public assets generally are. Its growth has not been matched by corresponding improvements in the provision of services to the non-financial economy. After the financial crisis, economics is in the doghouse. My FT colleague, Martin Sandbu, seeks to rescue the euro from obloquy. His argument is that it is not the euro but mistaken policy that has caused the crisis of the eurozone. Monetary union does not need fiscal and political union. It needs debt restructuring. Why Are We Waiting?: In this follow-up, he argues strongly that we are continuing to underestimate the costs of inaction.

It is time to act, he asserts, not only because the costs of failing to do so could be huge, but also because the costs of the needed actions are becoming ever smaller.

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This enjoyable book describes the role of the author in the making of an intellectual counter-revolution: Thaler explains how much we have learnt about the mistakes we humans are apt to make. Between Debt and the Devil: Turner, former chairman of the Financial Services Authority, provides a brilliant analysis of the fragility of our debt-fuelled economies. Hayek had applied this phrase to socialist planning. But uncritical belief in the free market rested on essentially the same mistaken utopianism.

We insure our lives against an uncertain future; so why not our planet? That is the question addressed in this lively and thought-provoking book. The authors show that among the possible outcomes of the path we are on are extreme climate changes.

Rational and far-sighted policymakers would wish to eliminate such possibilities. Yet if we are to achieve that goal, we need to act now. This book is about financial crises and how, in trying to avoid them, regulators and central bankers sometimes create the conditions that cause them. But Ip explains this paradox through entertaining and provocative parallels with the worlds of civil aviation, flood management and forestry.

Sometimes, he points out, it is better to allow a small fire to burn than to extinguish it and risk a bigger conflagration. The tale of how a talented engineer and an ambitious salesman created the signature business communications device of the early s is ably told by McNish and Silcoff.

Their blow-by-blow account explains just how much co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie got right in building and selling the device — and then how badly wrong they got their reaction to the all-conquering iPhone. This timely first draft of the history of a new cryptocurrency provides as reliable a guide to the rise of bitcoin as is possible, given the anarchy surrounding its creation, its volatile evolution and unpredictable future.

A fine explanation of the significance of the innovation and its underlying technology, the blockchain. Ranging widely from the latest research to her own experience, Slaughter points out that the problem is not, pace Sandberg, with women, but with work. Specifically, employers, leadership habits and policies need to change in order to allow women to advance freely.

One of the underlying messages is that maintaining a healthy culture requires constant vigilance and effort. By concentrating on a few significant characters — from Doug Morris, the tycoon at the top of the recorded music tree, to the highly organised pirates at the bottom — Witt maps out how an industry was turned on its head by file-sharing technology. A colourful cautionary tale for any established business facing digital disruption. Burgis, who worked as an FT correspondent in Africa, presents an unsparing portrait of the corruption that blights the continent.

But, at 1, pages, this is a formidably detailed, closely argued study of the making of one of the giants of 20th-century foreign policy. The book is brilliant, funny and deliberately offensive — and offers a sharp insight into the troubles of modern France. Journalist Lamb first started covering Afghanistan when the mujahideen were fighting the Russians.

Here she delivers a detailed, painful and convincing account of how and why the west failed in Afghanistan.

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The Authorised Biography, Volume Two: The Invention of Russia: A vivid account of the evolution of modern Russia by a former FT journalist. Ostrovsky shows how the liberal dreams of the Gorbachev era gave way to the authoritarian nationalism of the Putin period. Through a mix of anecdote and data, he shows how the loss of well-paid manufacturing jobs has wrought social havoc. Shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize.

Magna Carta, the foundation stone of constitutional government in the English-speaking world, passed its th anniversary this year. Cressy is the author of several delightful books on the social history of Tudor and Stuart England that draw on curious material buried in the archives. A Nation and not a Rabble: New books on the violent dawn of Irish independence are appearing thick and fast as the th anniversary of the Easter Uprising draws near.

Ferriter sets the bar high for good writing and scholarship in this outstanding study. In , religious conflict flared up on the Dutch-German border when a Catholic woman attempted to kidnap a baby to prevent its baptism in a Protestant church. Kaplan paints a lucid, fascinating picture of the Enlightenment as an age of prejudice as much as one of toleration. Aristocratic values, imperial mindsets and the emergence of modern nationalisms are the big themes of this illuminating history of late tsarist Russia.

Lieven writes with all the clarity, conviction and fluent command of sources that readers have come to expect of him. The murder in Chicago of Patrick Henry Cronin, an Irish-American physician and political activist, was one of the great scandals of 19th-century US public life.

At the Paris peace conference, the nations that emerged victorious from the first world war agreed to govern conquered territories under mandates from the League of Nations.

In her path-breaking study, Pedersen explores the tensions that arose from the collision of old-style imperialism with colonial nationalism and a new international bureaucratic order. Spang, author of a highly original book on French history entitled The Invention of the Restaurant , has done it again. Here she views the French Revolution from new angles by analysing the cultural significance of money at a time of European war, domestic terror and inflation.

If you read one book about the Armenian genocide, make this it. His account of the fate that befell the Armenians at Ottoman Turkish hands is harrowingly detailed and scrupulously objective. Why is Life the Way It Is? Biochemist Lane has written nothing less than a new theory of life, within the broad context of Darwinian evolution.

Nowotny, a great figure in European science policy, looks at the impact of uncertainty on all aspects of modern life. She is particularly interested in the efforts by researchers and technologists to reduce uncertainty — with mixed results. This is an important work of social science that will also entertain non-specialists. A rich blend of contemporary reportage and medical and social history, it explains why disorders on the autism spectrum are diagnosed so much more frequently today than they were a generation or two ago.

Scientists are beginning to appreciate the medical importance of the microbiome, the resident population of tn or so microbes inside the human body. Several popular books have appeared this year about our microbial guests, focusing on their role in promoting human health — and Spector, a world leader in genetic studies of twins, has written the best of them. The Invention of Science: Essays spanning 30, years of art history by a writer who uniquely combines critical acuity and imaginative empathy with Marxist conviction. Lampert has sat as a model to the reclusive artist for four decades.

That rare thing, a fresh perspective on impressionism. Art book of the year. First published in but only now appearing in the UK, this slab of a book is a fine monument to the man who built modern New York. Drawing parallels from modernist literature and art, Harbison suggests that the ruin and the fragment appeal to contemporary sensibilities precisely because of their incompleteness and their embodiment of loss and nostalgia.

With the destruction of sites of antiquity by Isis , this is a timely and beautifully written study of why we are so attached to pieces of the past. Harwood and Davies have produced a beautifully illustrated guide to this architectural legacy. The book is physically slim, but moreishly thick with insight. Remember that indelible opening scene in Jaws? The lone swimmer claimed by the deep was a professional stuntwoman, Susan Backlinie, just one in a long line that Gregory spotlights in a story that takes us back to the dawn of the movies.

Few guides for would-be screenwriters could match Hashimoto, whose long years writing for the great Kurosawa yielded landmarks such as Rashomon and Seven Samurai. Much of this crisply observant memoir serves as a blueprint for relations between writer and director. Later, after the two part company, things get spiky. Music, Sense and Nonsense: Brendel reflects deeply on Beethoven and Liszt, performing and recording, and — an endearing enthusiasm — his appreciation of humour in music.

The Other Classical Musics: From Turkish makam to Javanese gamelan and the Mande music of west Africa, the musical world embraces a wealth of classical traditions. This compendium seeks to open doors to the riches of 15 of the most substantial in a lively, but comprehensible style. Your display name should be at least 2 characters long. At Kobo, we try to ensure that published reviews do not contain rude or profane language, spoilers, or any of our reviewer's personal information. You submitted the following rating and review.

Building Success with Business Ethics: Advice from Business Leaders (Collection)

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