The Company: The Rise and Fall of the Hudson’s Bay Empire and Value(s): Building A Better World for All

For the first time in its 36-year history, two authors have been named winners of the National Business Book Award (NBBA) and its $30,000 prize. In an extraordinary year for the award, with its longest list ever of worthy nominees, Stephen R. Bown’s The Company: The Rise and Fall of the Hudson’s Bay Empire and Mark Carney’s Value(s): Building A Better World for All best exemplified the wide range and high calibre of outstanding Canadian business writing.

The Company: The Rise and Fall of the Hudson’s Bay Empire, published by Doubleday Canada, provides a fresh perspective on Canada’s founding myth. In re-telling the story of the Hudson’s Bay Company and its foundational role in the early development of our country, author Stephen Bown highlights the critical role that collaborative relationships with First Nations played in the venture’s earliest success. He also chronicles how competition, political agendas, economic shifts, and personalities converged to disrupt that fragile balance, ultimately contributing to the disenfranchisement of Indigenous people as Canada became a nation.

Stephen R. Bown has written ten books on the history of exploration, science, and ideas. His books have been translated into nine languages. Born in Ottawa, he now lives near Banff in the Canadian Rockies.

The 2021 finalists included:

• Grand Chief Ronald M. Derrickson, Fight or Submit: Standing Tall in Two World, published by ECW
  Press.

• Roger L. Martin, When More Is Not Better: Overcoming America’s Obsession with Economic
  Efficiency, published by Harvard Business Review Press.

• Jeff Rubin, The Expendables: How the Middle Class Got Screwed by Globalization, published by
  Random House Canada.