The 2025 Digital Tonto Reading List
One of the great things about books is that they can take you out of your current context. You can go to a different period of history, explore another industry or even a different planet. That’s one reason that I like doing these annual reading lists. They give me a record about what worlds I’ve chosen to enter in past years.
Looking back over the past year it’s clear that how things work—or don’t—was very much on my mind. We can have great ideas, put together plans and strategies, but if you can’t execute on the ground, everything is bound to go off the rails. That’s probably why so many of the books I read this year are about how to make stuff work better.
Reading books is, quite simply, how I work through the ideas I’m grappling with and, even if I can’t always find answers, I can usually learn enough to start asking better questions. The books I’ve read over the past year have certainly helped me do that, and I hope they can do the same for you. Also, please let me know about the books you’ve read in the comments.
Book Of The Year
Every year I choose one or two books that leave the deepest impact on me. Sometimes it’s because their ideas reshape how I think; other times it’s because they arrive at just the right moment, helping to explain events as they unfold. Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams fits both bills.
Wynn-Williams, an early Facebook employee who rose to become Director of Public Policy, traces the company’s meteoric rise in commerce alongside its descent into the moral abyss that defined its global influence. The book is witty and engaging, yet it leaves you unsettled, even disturbed, by the consequences of unchecked power.
In the end, the feeling echoes Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby: the leaders of our most powerful companies resemble Tom and Daisy, “careless people who smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness… leaving others to clean up the mess.”
Business, Management And Leadership
One of the most interesting books I read this year was Tribal, by behavioral psychologist Michael Morris. He points to three tribal instincts—the peer instinct, the hero instinct and the ancestor instinct—that leaders can leverage to pursue common purpose. It’s a fascinating—and eye opening—book.
One book that it seemed everybody was talking about this year was Abundance, by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, which explains why passing good policy isn’t enough, you need to have systems that can put it into action. The United States used to be a model for the world, able to tackle virtually any project, no matter how large or complex. Yet today we struggle to build everything from housing to sustainable energy, affordably and in a reasonable time frame.
Abundance is part of a whole rash of books that’s come out in recent years focused on the same issues. Why Nothing Works by Marc J. Dunkelman, explains how and why we got here. Recoding America by Jennifer Pahlka as well as Hack Your Bureaucracy by Marina Nitze and Nick Sinai tell a similar story from the perspective of government insiders and the The Friction Project, by Stanford professors Bob Sutton and Huggy Rao show how many of the same problems plague the corporate world.
I finally got around to reading Seeing Around Corners by Rita McGrath and was glad I did. Slow Productivity by Cal Newport explains why doing more faster isn’t the answer. To be truly productive, you need to create work that has lasting value and that takes time. The World for Sale by Javier Blas and Jack Farchy gives an exciting account of the surprisingly dark world of commodities trading.
Finally, Working Backwards by Colin Bryar and Bill Carr, which gives a comprehensive account of how Amazon does things, is definitely one of the better management books I’ve read. One of the things I really like about this book is that they show you the failures along the way, so you can see the process that led to solutions that they came up with.
Transformation, Change And Innovation
Katalin Karikó’s memoir Breaking Through was one of the most heartwarming books I’ve read in years. It tells the story of her rise from poverty in a small village in communist Hungary, through decades of thankless toil, until finally hitting the breakthrough that would win her the Nobel Prize for her discovery of mRNA vaccines and worldwide fame. This is a book I’d recommend to anyone.
Shop Class As Soul Craft by Matthew Crawford, which argues against the concept of the “knowledge worker” and for the value of shaping things in the physical world, is a book I’ve wanted to read for awhile and it did not disappoint. In a similar vein, in The Problem With Change, Ashley Goodall argues that the cult of disruption has upended productive stability.
Going in a completely different direction, in Co-Intelligence, Wharton professor Ethan Mollick explains how we can better collaborate with machines. Also, because the AI boom has inspired so many comparisons to the earlier railroad boom, I read Iron Empires, Michael Hiltzik’s history of that earlier era. As with all of Hilzik’s books, it was thorough and utterly compelling.
History, Society And Politics
On Freedom by Timothy Snyder is probably one of the most important books to come out in some time. Snyder argues that freedom is not simply the absence of restraint but the presence of conditions that allow people to live and act meaningfully in the world. In a similar vein, Strongmen by Ruth Ben-Ghiat shows how authoritarians throughout history have attacked freedom in order to benefit themselves and thor cronies.
The Infidel and the Professor by Dennis C. Rasmussen tells the story of the great friendship between David Hume and Adam Smith and explains how that affected both of their thinking. May Contain Lies by Alex Edmans gives an entertaining account of how to think more critically and effectively about the information we’re constantly inundated with.
I’ve always been a big fan of Zbigniew Brzezinski, so when I heard that Edward Luce, of the Financial Times, was coming out with a full-length biography, Zbig, I bought it immediately. I wasn’t disappointed. It gave a deep, rich history of not only his life but the Cold War as a whole, and still managed to be enormous fun to read.
Finally, The Power Broker by Robert Caro, about the life of Robert Moses is a book I’ve wanted to read for a long time, but was always intimidated by the length (1200 pages!!!). This year I finally took the plunge and was glad I did. It is truly one of the best biographies ever written.
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So that’s my list for this year. If you have any suggestions, feel free to let me know in the comments section.
I will publish my “Top Posts of 2025” next Sunday and then will take the rest of the year off. I’ll be back on Sunday, January 4th with my future trend for 2025.
Greg Satell is Co-Founder of ChangeOS, a transformation & change advisory, a lecturer at Wharton, an international keynote speaker, host of the Changemaker Mindset podcast, bestselling author of Cascades: How to Create a Movement that Drives Transformational Change and Mapping Innovation, as well as over 50 articles in Harvard Business Review. You can learn more about Greg on his website, GregSatell.com, follow him on Twitter @DigitalTonto, watch his YouTube Channel and connect on LinkedIn.
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