FT 2009 Book Awards: Bowled over by a forceful lesson from financial history

Andrew Hill:

Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it, as George Santayana famously put it. On that basis, Lords of Finance - winner of the 2009 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award - teaches a forceful lesson to the world's economic policymakers.*

Liaquat Ahamed's vivid history of how central bankers' mistakes helped precipitate the Great Depression bowled over the judges and swept away a strong field of finalists for the 2009 prize.

It was not only that the book was "beautifully written", in the words of Lionel Barber, the FT's editor. Its selection as the "most compelling and enjoyable" business book of the past year was also due to the strong parallels between the events

Mr Ahamed describes and the events leading to the past two years of economic and financial turmoil. The book "reminds us that tumult in financial markets wasn't created in the 21st century", says Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive of Goldman Sachs and co-chair of the judging panel with Mr Barber.