First things first: The correct pronunciation of "Pulitzer" (according to the folks at Columbia University who administer the Pulitzer Prize) is "PULL it sir". You may hear people saying "PEW lit sir," but those folks must be thinking of The Pew Charitable Trust or perhaps the character of Blind Pew in Robert Louis Stevenson's
Treasure Island (that's him as imagined by N.C. Wyeth on the artwork for the Blackstone Audio edition).
Now that we've got that cleared up... on Monday April 12, the Pulitzer Board announced the 2010 awards in Journalism, Letters, Drama, and Music. This year's winner in the History category was Liaquat Ahamed's Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World, available unabridged on Playaway from Tantor Audio.
Ahamed's book is a detailed examination of the careers of four men who's names are now all but forgotten but who were at the very center of the economic crisis that became the Great Depression. The four were: Montagu Norman of the Bank of England, Emile Moreau of the Banque de France, Hjalmar Schacht of the Reichsbank, and Benjamin Strong of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Though all were brilliant and dynamic figures, Ahamed blames the out-dated thinking and ill-fated decisions of these key central bankers for plunging the world into crisis.
Ahamed uses these four figures both to try to bring the dimensions of a global economic disaster down to a more human scale and also to exemplify the different national personalities of what were at the time the world's four economic superpowers. Also prominently featured in the book is John Maynard Keynes, who represented a completely new way of thinking about world economics and central banking.
Ahamed himself is an economist and investment manager, and, interestingly, this is his very first book. Students of history (and of our present economic dangers) will find it highly readable, and, thanks to the capable narration of Stephen Hoye, highly listenable as well.
This year in the category of music, the Pulitzer Board awarded a posthumous "Special Citation" to country music legend Hiram King "Hank" Williams. His contributions to the understanding of global economics included the hit songs, "I Wish I Had a Nickel," "The Tramp on the Street," and
"Wealth Won't Save Your Soul" (not to mention "There's a Tear in My Beer").
Elsewhere in the world of literary prizes, earlier this month The National Book Critics Circle announced their annual awards for the best books of 2009 in six categories. The winner for biography was Blake Bailey's Cheever: A Life. The audiobook version, produced by Blackstone Audio and narrated by the talented and prolific Grover Gardner, is available on Playaway.
To receive blog posts in your e-mail inbox or RSS reader, click on "subscribe to this blog's feed".
Posted by David Perrotta, MLIS
Playaway Senior Content Strategist
Twitter: david_perrotta
