‘The Battle’ by Arthur Brooks has been named World Magazine’s Book of the Year. Runner up is Eric Metaxas’ biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

World Magazine’s Book of the Year is The Battle: How the Fight Between Free Enterprise and Big Government Will Shape America’s Future (May 2010, Basic Books). This succinct work by Arthur Brooks is — according to Editor-in-Chief Marvin Olasky — “the right book at this moment in U.S. history.”

Olasky says that Brooks has written a book about economics that is “not just about money.” Olasky writes: “The Battle shows how Washington power grabbers have used financial fears to tell Americans how to live-and it shows the rest of us how to fight back.”

Brooks is president of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a non-partisan public policy think tank in Washington, D.C. committed to expanding liberty, increasing individual opportunity, and strengthening free enterprise. Until 2009, Brooks was the Louis A. Bantle Professor of Business and Government Policy at Syracuse University, where his research focused on the intersections of economics, entrepreneurship, and philanthropy. Previously, Brooks spent 12 years as a professional French hornist with the City Orchestra of Barcelona and other ensembles. He is a native of Seattle and currently lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his wife Ester and their three children.

Eric Metaxas’ Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy (April 2010, Thomas Nelson) is the runner-up for Book of the Year. Metaxas tells Bonhoeffer’s story in “600 thorough but immaculately readable pages.”

The book is timely in that this year is the 65th year since Bonhoeffer’s execution by the Nazis for standing against the Third Reich. The book is timely in at least one other sense: It has already found a spot on the New York Times Bestseller List, indicating, according to Olasky, “contemporary resonance with its 20th century themes.”
Metaxas is a graduate of Yale University. From 1988-1992, he was editorial director and head writer for Rabbit Ears Productions, writing over 20 children’s videos and books. Metaxas was for two years a writer and editor for Chuck Colson’s Breakpoint, a nationally syndicated daily radio program. He then worked as a writer for VeggieTales, where he co-wrote Lyle the Kindly Viking, and provided the voice of the narrator on Esther. Eric’s acclaimed biography, Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery was published by HarperSanFrancisco. Eric attends Calvary/St. George’s Episcopal Church, and lives in Manhattan, New York, with his wife and daughter.