Congratulations to author Carl Benedikt Frey, whose How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations has been shortlisted for the prestigious 2025 Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award.
How Progress Ends challenges the conventional belief that economic and technological progress is inevitable. For most of human history, stagnation was the norm, and even today progress and prosperity in the world’s largest, most advanced economies—the United States and China—have fallen short of expectations.
To appreciate why we cannot depend on any AI-fueled great leap forward, economic historian Carl Frey offers a remarkable and fascinating journey across the globe, spanning the past 1,000 years—from Song China, to the Dutch Republic, Victorian Britain, Soviet Union, and beyond—to explain why some societies flourish and others fail in the wake of rapid technological change. Throughout this history, Frey uncovers a recurring tension: while decentralization fosters the exploration of new technologies, bureaucracy is crucial for scaling them. When institutions fail to adapt to technological change, stagnation inevitably follows.
Publishing in Europe and North America on September 16th, How Progress Ends has received advance praise for Frey’s ”incisive and stimulating consideration of a critical issue” (Publishers Weekly) and has been hailed as “essential reading for anyone looking to understand the drivers of technological progress” (Chris Miller, Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology) and “a grand, urgent must-read for anyone who cares about our past, present, and future“ (Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI).
Author Carl Frey is the Dieter Schwarz Associate Professor of AI and Work at the Oxford Internet Institute and Oxford Martin Citi Fellow at the Oxford Martin School, both at the University of Oxford. His books include The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation (Princeton), a “superb guide to 21st-century automation and its disruptive effects (The Guardian).
The Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award is given annually to honor “the most outstanding business books, judged for their compelling and enjoyable insights.”
Princeton University Press titles previously recognized by the prize include Paul Seabright’s Princeton University Press titles recognized by the prize include Paul Seabright’s The Divine Economy: How Religions Compete for Wealth, Power, and People (longlist, 2024), Minouche Shafik’s What We Owe Each Other: A New Social Contract for a Better Society (longlist, 2021), and Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism by Angus Deaton (shortlist, 2020).
How Progress Ends is one of six books selected from among 16 longlisted titles, and 500 prize entries in total, for this year’s shortlist. A prize a winner will announced on December 3, in London.
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691233079/how-progress-ends
