Who are the intrepid masterminds of the business book world? How did they succeed in grabbing readers’ attention?

For the tenth year running, getAbstract will present its award for the Business Book of the Year at the opening of the Frankfurt Book Fair on October 6, 2010.

Following the assessment of more than 10,000 English and German business books, ranging from leadership and management to strategy and marketing to finance and career development, the getAbstract finalists of the current publications now stand:

ENGLISH

• 13 BANKERS by Simon Johnson and James Kwak, Pantheon Books, Random House
• ACCELERATING OUT OF THE GREAT RECESSION by David Rhodes and Daniel Stelter, McGraw-Hill
• HOW AN ECONOMY GROWS AND WHY IT CRASHES by Peter D. Schiff and Andrew J. Schiff, Wiley, John Wiley & Sons
• KEYNES – RETURN OF THE MASTER by Robert Skidelsky, PublicAffairs, The Perseus Books Group/ Allen Lane, Penguin Group UK
• MORE MONEY THAN GOD by Sebastian Mallaby, Penguin Press USA/ Bloomsbury UK

GERMAN

• DIE INFLATION KOMMT! by Stefan Riße, FinanzBuch Verlag
• DIE PERSONALFALLE by Jörg Knoblauch, Campus Verlag
• EXIT by Meinhard Miegel, Propyläen Verlag
• EFFECTUATION by Michael Faschingbauer, Schäffer-Poeschel Verlag
• MARKT OHNE MORAL by Susanne Schmidt, Droemer Verlag

Two English titles and two German titles will receive the prestigious award, which over the course of ten years has come to be highly regarded in the publishing world.

The official awards ceremony will take place between 4pm and 5pm on October 6, 2010 at the Reading Tent of the Frankfurt Book Fair, Ludwig-Erhard-Anlage 1, 60327 Frankfurt.

About the getAbstract International Book Award

The longest running international business book award celebrates its 10th anniversary!
Since 2001, getAbstract has awarded the prize to esteemed authors such as George A. Akerlof, Robert J. Shiller, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Benoit Mandelbrot, Joseph Stiglitz, Malcolm Gladwell, Thomas Sowell and Chris Anderson, as well as their publishers.

To learn more about previous getAbstract International Book Award winners, visit www.getAbstract.com and click on the link “Book Award” at the bottom.

Have you heard of the “Black Swan” theory? It explains that highly consequential but unlikely events can render predictions and standard explanations worse than worthless. Well, how about the “Driving Bear” theory? Similar in its execution, it details the improbable event of a black bear climbing into your car, attracted by the peanut butter sandwich you left in the back seat. When your door closes, locking the bear inside, the bear panics, hits the gear shift, puts the car in neutral and sets it rolling 125 feet backward into a thicket. The bear then tears your car apart in an effort to get out, causing immense damage. Ok, so the Driving Bear paradigm isn’t a real theory, but these are the true events that occurred in 17-year-old Ben Story’s car in Larkspur, Colorado, near Denver.

Hopefully his insurance covers just such random events, though that seems even more unlikely than the bear getting into the car in the first place.

To learn more about theories on randomness, check out the following links:

The Black Swan (in the Commonwealth)

The Black Swan (in the Rest of World, including Colorado)

Fooled by Randomness

Stalking the Black Swan

…Even the British Royal family does it. Yes, the Queen of England has opened  her very own Flickr account, jumping on the social media bandwagon. (I’m sorry, to what did you think I was alluding?) She follows in the footsteps of New Zealand band The Mutton Birds and the natural beeswax product manufacturer Burt’s Bees, both of which have Facebook accounts. (Clutching at straws? This blogger? Never!)  Queen Elizabeth II isn’t exactly famed for being a progressive early adaptor, so if she’s online and you are not, you should be ashamed of yourself. Hop to it! Here is some advice on how to get started:

Socialnomics

The Social Factor

33 Million People in a Room