The 6 Most Influential Business Books Of 2014

EMMIE MARTIN

 SEP. 26, 2014

Ralph Orlowski/Getty Images

This year, the most influential books cover topics from inequality to digital privacy.

Each year, dozens of books detailing business strategies and profiling success stories are published, making it difficult to discern which ones are worth your time.

Luckily, an esteemed panel of judges for the annual Financial Times’ and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award (previously Goldman Sachs was a partner) have released a short list of the six most influential books of the year.

The topics range from inequality to digital privacy, and the judges hope they will inspire creative thinking and help readers deepen their understanding of today’s world, says Lionel Barber, editor of the Financial Times.

Panel members include Steve Coll, dean of the School of Journalism at Columbia University and a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine; Steve Denning, chairman of General Atlantic, LLC; and Rik Kirkland, director of publishing for McKinsey & Company.

Here are the books that made the list:

“Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security, and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance“ 
By Julia Angwin 
Times Books/Henry Holt

“The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies“ 
By Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee 
W. W. Norton Ltd

Amazon

“Creativity, Inc. Overcoming the Unseen Forces that Stand in the Way of True Inspiration“ 
By Ed Catmull 
Bantam Press/Transworld Publishers (UK), Random House (US)

“Hack Attack: How the Truth Caught Up With Rupert Murdoch“ 
By Nick Davies 
Chatto & Windus (UK), Faber & Faber (US)

“House of Debt: How They (and You) Caused the Great Recession, and How We Can Prevent It from Happening Again“ 
By Atif Mian and Amir Sufi 
University of Chicago Press

“Capital in the Twenty-First Century“ 
By Thomas Piketty 
Belknap Press/Harvard University Press

The winning book will be announced on November 11. Previous winners have included Brad Stone’s “The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon” (2013); Steve Coll’s “Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power” (2012); and Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo’s “Poor Economics” (2011).