Can you conceive of a world where business wants stronger government? Jack Donahue and Richard Zeckhauser explain why it is the best interest of business to have a strong, functioning, and collaborative government as a partner in this original Bloomberg Government article.

If you have a Bloomberg account, you can read this terrific article online: http://www.bgov.com/news_item/0EfXRKdDrw8iYcwLplzlvw

Otherwise, Bloomberg has generously provided this screen grab for our readers, too.

Two Princeton books have recently been mentioned on strategy+business‘ online list of the “Best Business Books 2010.” Raghuram G. Rajan’s Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy made the cut for the category, “The Economy,” and was reviewed by David Warsh, while Boris Groysberg’s Chasing Stars: The Myth of Talent and the Portability of Performance appeared in the category, “Human Capital” and was reviewed by Sally Helgesen.

Click here and here to see the reviews. And if you would like to see a list of other recent award-winning books from PUP, please click here!

Five Princeton books were recently featured in Financial Times‘ Nonfiction Round-Up for 2010! Here’s what FT had to say about them:

Business & Economics

	Banking on the Future: The Fall and Rise of Central Banking, by Howard Davies and David Green The best assessment yet of the role played by the leading western central banks – the US Federal Reserve, the ECB and the Bank of England – in the run-up to the financial crisis and beyond, from two former insiders at the top level of UK policymaking.
	Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk Among Us, by John Quiggin A critical look, from a left-leaning perspective, at some of the defining intellectual fashions of the past three decades. Quiggin is a writer of great verve who marshals some powerful evidence.
	Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy, by Raghuram G Rajan A high-powered yet accessible analysis of the financial crisis and its aftermath, Fault Lines was awarded the FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year. Rajan, a University of Chicago economist, was one of the few who warned that the crisis was coming and his book fizzes with striking and thought-provoking ideas.

Science & Environment

Honeybee Democracy, by Thomas D Seeley The year’s most enchanting science book. Seeley, biology professor at Cornell University, distils the insights of 40 years studying and keeping bees. He focuses on the astonishing “democratic” process that takes place when a swarm of thousands of bees leaves an overcrowded hive to find a new home: how scouts evaluate potential sites and advertise their merits, how a final choice is made, and how the swarm navigates to its new nest.

Sport

Gaming the World: How Sports Are Reshaping Global Politics and Culture, by Andrei S Markovits and Lars Rensmann A very readable guide to the recent globalisation of sport by academics who understand both US and European sports. Packed with examples, from David Beckham to Kobe Bryant, the book explores the tension between sport’s globalisation and the fact that most teams still arouse the greatest emotions in their local areas.

Definitely a great year of non-fiction books! Congratulations to all authors mentioned!

Continued »

Congratulations to Raghuram G. Rajan, whose book, Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy, has been shortlisted for the 2010 Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award!

Of the 200 books entered for the award, the judges chose six books which, in their opinion, provided “the most compelling and enjoyable insight into modern business issues.” Lionel Barber, Financial Times editor and chairman of the judging panel, commented:

The overall winner of the 2010 Book Award will be announced on October 27 at an award dinner in New York, at which Vartan Gregorian, President of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, will be the keynote speaker. The winning author will receive £30,000 and the other shortlisted authors will each receive £10,000. Best of luck to Raghuram!

To see a list of other recent award-winning books from Princeton University Press, click here.

Continued »

The Financial Times interviews Carmen M. Reinhart, co-author of This Time is Different about the financial crises.

Carmen Reinhart talks about:

The history of financial crises and their patterns:
http://bit.ly/cbduas

The aftermath of financial crises:
http://bit.ly/dCMVme

The role of debt and monetary policy:
http://bit.ly/aqtQEF

The Greek crisis and the possibility for contagion and restructuring:
http://bit.ly/bDuhdl

This Time Is Different:
Eight Centuries of Financial Folly
Carmen M. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff
Read the Preface and Chapter 1 here: http://bit.ly/blJclU

It is taken for granted in the knowledge economy that companies must employ the most talented performers to compete and succeed. Many firms try to buy stars by luring them away from competitors. But Boris Groysberg shows what an uncertain and disastrous practice this can be.

After examining the careers of more than a thousand star analysts at Wall Street investment banks, and conducting more than two hundred frank interviews, Boris Groysberg comes to a striking conclusion: star analysts who change firms suffer an immediate and lasting decline in performance. Their earlier excellence appears to have depended heavily on their former firms’ general and proprietary resources, organizational cultures, networks, and colleagues. There are a few exceptions, such as stars who move with their teams and stars who switch to better firms. Female stars also perform better after changing jobs than their male counterparts do. But most stars who switch firms turn out to be meteors, quickly losing luster in their new settings.

Check out the new book by Boris Groysberg
Chasing Stars:
The Myth of Talent and the Portability of Performance

Read more about the book, including the introduction at: http://bit.ly/9iejjq

Michael Schrage over at the Harvard Business Review’s blog calls our author Steven Strogatz’s NYTimes.com’s Opinionator blog posts “must reads for entrepreneurs and executives who grasp that mathematics is now the “lingua franca” of serious business analysis.”  Who do you think the best business columnist is?  I’d welcome your suggestions. 

Check out Steve’s new book THE CALCULUS OF FRIENDSHIP if you haven’t!

Hardy Green, former books editor at Business Week, has created a new blog devoted to the wonderful world of business (and judging by a few of the early posts, popular economics) book publishing. Check it out here.

Incroyable, n’est pas? C’est dommage…mais je suppose que c’est la vie. September 30 is the day of reckoning for the beloved seventy-four year old bookshop, Librairie de France in Rockefeller Center.  According to this New York Times blurb the rent is too much for the current owner and he will be forced to close.  This saddens me greatly.  I spent many a yuletide visit to New York with widened, childlike eyes, browsing the stacks and imagining myself in Paris instead of packed in, shoulder to shoulder, with the holiday matinee crowds.  The shuttering of theLibrairie means that yet another little relic of Old Manhattan will disappear into the history books.

What are your memories of the Librairie de France and other long-gone vestiges of book culture?

We were very pleased to hear this week that two Princeton University Press economicstitles are on the longlist for consideration of the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year–the only university press on the list.  Congratulations to George Akerlof and Robert Shiller for ANIMAL SPIRITS: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism, and to Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff for their soon-to-be published THIS TIME IS DIFFERENT: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly. Shortlist  announcements will be made in September.

Amar Bhide speaking at the Kauffman Foundation about The Venturesome Economy.

Jon Macey gives a great interview on Fox Business last night on the subject of his op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (‘Say on Pay’ and Other Bad Ideas) yesterday and why the government doesn’t want their bailout money back.

Here’s an excerpt from the transcript:

Host: Welcome, Jonathan you’re saying that the government doesn’t want the money back because they want to continue to control or cap control over Wall Street.

Macey: That’s right if there’s one thing we’ve learned. Over the past couple hundred years about bureaucracies. Is that they don’t like to give up power once they’ve got it. Take a look at the Tennessee Valley Authority. They were created to put electricity into the Tennessee valley. They did that, but did they go away. No they said oh they need phone services. So they got phone services to everybody in that part of the US and did they go away? No, they’re still around and what do they do? Who knows. They loaned money to people and people can never have enough money so they’ll be around forever…