October 26, 2007
The Last Tycoons is a worthy winner
It was a fun evening at the FT and Goldman Sachs Business Book awards dinner in London last night and congratulations to Bill Cohan, whose book The Last Tycoons beat off stiff competition from Alan Greenspan’s Age of Turbulence and the rest of the shortlist to win.
In the three years I have been on the judging panel, I think this was the hardest decision for the panel to make. But I am glad Bill won for a couple of reasons.
First, it is a very enjoyable book and unusually well-researched. He managed to get most of the people inside Lazard to speak to him, as I noted in my original review.
Second, I think there is always a temptation to give the prize to a "macro" book that gives a sweeping overview of a topic of importance. That was true of the first two winners, Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat and James Kynge’s China Shakes the World (worthy winners both).
Cohan’s book was on a "micro" topic - the story of a single, and quite small, investment bank. But that small story carried lots of lessons that apply more widely, from the difficulty of managing talented and temperamental people to how French Jewish emigres prospered in post-war New York.
There is lots more coverage of the award here.
