It’s the annual longlist moment. The rules are that any book I read this year is eligible, no matter when it was first published, that the decision is entirely mine, and that the prize is my taking the author(s) to lunch if and when we find ourselves in the same place.

I narrowed it down to 12 for the longlist. In no particular order:

Anthrovision – Gillian Tett. My review here.

Shutdown – Adam Tooze. My Democracy review here.

Home in the World – Amartya Sen. My review here.

Vaxxers – Sarah Gilbert & Catherine Green. My review here.

The Plague Cycle – Charles Kenny. My review here.

Man from the Future – Ananyo Bhattacharya. My review here.

Value(s) – Mark Carney. My FT review here.

What We Owe Each Other: A New Social Contract – Minouche Shafik. My FT review here.

Good Data – Sam Gilbert. My review here.

The Radical Potter – Tristram Hunt. I don’t seem to have reviewed it on the blog but say a bit about it here.

Mountain Tales – Saumya Roy. My review here.

End State – James Plunkett. My review here.

I’ll decide on my top choice next week.

It’s a month since I posted the shortlist for this entirely personal prize for the best economics book I’ve read in the previous 12 months. So the time has come to announce the winner. It has been a difficult choice – I was about to write that getting it down to a final four was relatively straightforward, but then I started arguing with myself about the titles I’d eliminated. Anyway, on the criteria of (a) contains serious economic argument, (b) accessible to a wider readership than professional economists, (c) I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, the winner is:

[amazon_link id=”1906924775″ target=”_blank” ]Economic Fables[/amazon_link] by Ariel Rubinstein

[amazon_image id=”1906924775″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Economic Fables[/amazon_image]

The prize is mainly the honour, of course – unlike the FT’s book prize, I don’t have the financial heft of Goldman Sachs backing this. However, I will be delighted to take Ariel and his publisher out for a celebratory meal if we can arrange all to be in the same city some time.