Breadth of topics for this year's leading business book award captures trend of increasing social consciousness in Canadian business writing
TORONTO, April 3, 2008 — The five finalists for this year's National Business Book Award were announced today by co-sponsors PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and BMO Financial Group. The award of $20,000 is given to the author of an outstanding Canadian business-related book.
This year's entries are testament to the breadth of Canadian business writing — spanning critical studies of economic practices and big business, new frontiers for sustainability and the investigation of a prolific art collector. Such a range reveals the evolution of Canadian business writing over the years from financial analysis to social, historical and economic commentaries on the issues affecting the Canadian business world.
This year's finalists are:
- Rodrigo Bascuñán and Christian Pearce, Enter the Babylon System: Unpacking Gun Culture from Samuel Colt to 50 Cent, published by Random House Canada. Bascuñán and Pearce explore why gun culture has become an intractable aspect of popular culture. Eye-opening interviews with rappers, academics and gun lobbyists help explain why the global death toll from small firearms is approximately 11,000 daily. The book provides an inquiry into the little-investigated firearms industry, focusing on the "system": gun manufacturers, media and the government.
- Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, published by Knopf Canada. In Shock Doctrine, Klein offers a new economic worldview. As Klein presents it, neoliberal economic programs have been imposed across the world on an unsuspecting populace shaken by shock. This so-called shock therapy takes many forms — military coup, violence and force, war, induced hyperinflation, terrorism, and climate disasters — often developed in secrecy and implemented too rapidly for citizens to respond. Agree or not, it's destined to alter how people see the free marketplace and economists.
- William Marsden, Stupid to the Last Drop: How Alberta is Bringing Environmental Armageddon to Canada (and doesn't seem to care), published by Knopf Canada. Marsden delivers an engaging, powerful account of the environmental devastation caused by oil sands drilling in Alberta, an industry profiting from $100-a-barrel oil. Bolstered by interviews with a geophysicist, a climate change expert and a Cree hunter, Marsden tells the story of a government's complicity with big business, at the expense of Alberta's citizens.
- Jacques Poitras, Beaverbrook: A Shattered Legacy, published by Goose Lane Editions. Poitras tracks the steps Lord Beaverbrook, also known as William Maxwell Aitken, took to build one of East Coast Canada's finest art collections. The author moves through volumes of archival material, cast up by the recent court case launched by his descendants who contested the ownership of the art collection he bestowed on the citizens of New Brunswick in 1957.
- Chris Turner, The Geography of Hope: A Tour of the World We Need, published by Random House Canada. Turner embarked on a global quest to explore the possibilities of sustainable living. He visits eco-pioneers in 10 countries, reporting on solar energy in Germany, hydroelectricity in Southeast Asia and the world's first solar-powered subdivision, located in Alberta. Turner offers a glimpse of the future from a business and, more importantly, human perspective.
Now in its 23rd year, the award continues to gain attention from not only the Canadian business world, but also publishers, authors, journalists, academics, economists, politicians and business leaders from around the world. This year's National Business Book Award accepted entries whose themes included business management, business history, business biography, or economics in (or associated with) Canada. To be eligible, books had to be published during 2007 and be Canadian business related.
The National Business Book Award jury is chaired by former Ontario Premier, Honourable William G. Davis, who is now counsel to the law firm Torys LLP. The panel includes: Jane Cooney, President, Books for Business; William Dimma, Chairman, Brookfield Corporation; Anne Kingston, journalist and winner of the 1994 National Business Book Award; and Peter Mansbridge, Chief Correspondent, CBC Television Network.
The winner of the National Business Book Award will be announced on April 22, 2008 at a luncheon in Toronto hosted by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and BMO Financial Group. John Stackhouse, Editor, Report on Business, The Globe and Mail, is the master of ceremonies.
Last year's National Business Book Award winner was Thomas Homer-Dixon for The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization.
For more information or to arrange interviews, please contact:
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