I’m honored to hear that The Search is up for a Loeb, which is the most prestigious award in business journalism. But the field is quite competitive, and I’m just thrilled to be among the other fine books noted. (Somehow, I sense The World Is Flat will sweep…!)
UPDATE: Well, this is embarrassing, but my publisher told me I was a finalist, along with about ten other books, but now the release is out, and only three are on it, and The Search ain’t one of them. I guess I was given bad info. Sigh.
You can have my vote!
Hey John, if it’s any consolation, in my list The Search easily beats out the other books. I read and enjoyed Freakonomics but think the whole phenomena aspect of the book is overblown. Perhaps it should be subtitled ‘Confessions of a stubborn contrarian with a calculator and time on his hands.’ I tried to read The World is Flat and couldn’t get through the second chapter. Friedman’s prose just annoyed me. His narrative voice sounded like some git insisting on proving how smart they are, over and over.
But The Search was very readable, engaging and informative. Both for me, who has subscribed to SearchBlog for years and attended the first Web 2.0 conference in ’04, and for my girlfriend, who works in book publishing and loved to hear about the inner workings of her favourite search engine. Awards are a mugs game anyhow. Pitting on book against another is like arguing for your favorite color. Sure awards can sell books and provide encouragement to the author and publisher, and maybe they look good on a resume or summary of accomplishments, but … where was I going with this? Oh yeah, write another great book and forget about awards.
But no one died, right.
I wouldn’t be too ashamed, it’s still a good book.