The 15-book longlist for this year’s ‘Business Book of the Year Award’, organised annually by the Financial Times, has been announced.
The award, sponsored for the first time this year by Standard Chartered Bank, is also supported by Nikkei, the owner of the Financial Times. The award aims to identify the book that offers the “most engaging and enjoyable” perspectives on contemporary business issues.
The 15-book longlist for the 2026 award includes three former winners: William Cohan, Liaquat Ahamed and Sebastian Mallaby. The award has been given to a technology-related book in five of the past six years. Stephen Witt’s book *The Thinking Machine*, which chronicles the rise of chip manufacturer Nvidia, took first place in 2025.
The 2026 longlist, marking the 22nd edition of this prestigious award, is once again rich in works exploring the transformative impact of technology, with the 15 books divided into three categories: business and power, business and innovation, and business and society.
The shortlist of six books will be announced on 6 October, whilst the winner will be revealed on 2 December. The seven-member jury is chaired by Roula Khalaf, Editor-in-Chief of the Financial Times. The longlist of 15 books competing for the £30,000 prize is as follows:
In 1873: The First Great Depression and the Making of the Modern World – Liaquat Ahamed
Money to Burn: Leon Black, Apollo and the Remaking of Wall Street – William Cohan
Bonfire of the Murdochs: How the Epic Fight to Control the Last Great Media Dynasty
Broke a Family — and the World – Gabriel Sherman
Wall Street in Streetwise: Getting To and Through Goldman Sachs – Lloyd Blankfein
The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind and the Quest for Superintelligence
– Sebastian Mallaby
The UPS Man: James E Casey and the Creation of Modern Logistics – Marc Levinson
Off the Scales: The Inside Story of Ozempic and the Race to Cure Obesity – Aimee Donnellan
Project Maven: A Marine Colonel, His Team, and the Dawn of AI Warfare – Katrina Manson
In We Know You Can Pay a Million: Inside the Dark Economy of Hacking and
Ransomware – Anja Shortland
The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State – Jill Lepore
Prophecy: Prediction, Power and the Fight for the Future, from Ancient Oracles to AI – Carissa Véliz
Hyperscale: Ambition, Power and the Relentless Rise of Data Empires – Paris Marx
In Blood Will Flow: The Murderous Business of Oil and Gas – Alex Perry
Frontierlands: Britain’s Survival in the Making – Hazel Sheffield
How Africa Works: Success and Failure on the World’s Last Developmental Frontier –
Joe Studwell