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They say great minds think alike — or maybe they land on similar ideas because they are observing the same world all around them. Every year, as my team and I curate the absolute best books of the year, we discover some themes across the 1000-plus submissions we consider.
We call them themes — and they reflect a combination of the cultural zeitgeist of what’s happening in business today and the hot topics on the minds of entrepreneurs and business professionals right now. Among books published this year, we read about the importance of calm and overcoming anxiety, climate solutions, putting generosity first, reevaluating the human condition in an age of AI, the power of quiet leadership and many more. Read on to see the trends we spotted and some of our thoughts on how they might be relevant for you as we head into 2025 and beyond.
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1. Calming anxiety and burnout
After a divisive election year, a rise in anxiety and growing awareness of mental health at work, this year, there has been a slate of books focused on what to do about burnout at work. Some advocated working less, while others focused on productivity hacks. From destressing to conquering anxiety, the idea of calm in work and life became an urgent topic, and this reality was reflected through books aiming to offer desperately needed help.
2. Math mindedness
Can math explain the world? This year, math minds took center stage to offer perspectives on everything from how AI actually works to how it powers the most popular games in the world. Geography, geometry, statistics and even models of thinking got the numbers treatment as this group of books put math back into the spotlight and argued that understanding the world, making new friends and shifting our perspective all come down to better understanding math.
3. Good aging
If longevity exploded in 2023, then this year offers a correction to books focusing on how we live instead of just techniques for living longer. Alongside the longevity topic, many new books this year shifted to offering insights on how to be old successfully. From loving mid-life to living a wonderous life of purpose, the new theme around aging seems to be enjoying the time you have, whether it lasts a century or less.
4. Rethinking higher education
As the workplace shifts and the costs of higher education continue to spark debate, a range of books this year offered either a commentary on the higher education experience or a suggestion for a compelling alternative to the traditional four-year college experience. As more young people consider alternative paths to success, the college question is accelerating and will likely spark much more continuing dissent and conversation over the coming year and beyond.
5. Generosity first
Perhaps in response to a world that feels as though it rewards toxicity, several books this year put generosity and the idea of generous leadership front and center. Fostering a friendly team dynamic, maintaining hope instead of becoming cynical and living life by giving more back were all key themes that stood out this year as authors offered a more optimistic prescription for how to live and work that reminded us about the too easily forgotten power of actually caring for one another and why doing it may be the key to prosperity and happiness.
6. Saving humanity
Last year, the big theme with AI-focused books was all about designing AI in more human ways and reducing bias or other potential issues with the technology as it gains widespread adoption. This year, that trend continued, but many books took a decidedly more philosophical turn as they pondered human existence in a world ruled by AI. Will we exist or be necessary? Is our demise inevitable? As we live through a new technology age, these questions have received a renewed sense of urgency and attention as many books have helped reimagine what it will mean to be human in an increasingly automated future.
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7. The female lens
For the past several years, there has been a growing number of writers turning their attention to the previously neglected female perspective on many different topics. This year, that feminine lens focused on the history of women on Wall Street, memoirs from female trailblazers like Connie Chung, female-first branding techniques, and the exploration of women’s role in creating the crossword puzzle. Along with offering a gendered correction to decades of male-centered perspectives on history, this new range of books provides the stories of previously neglected female heroines from history who deserve to be remembered.
8. Finding purpose
This year, a big topic for many books focused on finding your passion and purpose. Rather than living a rudderless life, people of all ages are seeing reminders of living a life with purpose and leaving a legacy they can be proud of. Whether it was finding your passion or avoiding despair (seasonal, political, environmental or otherwise), these hopeful books offered to help you rediscover your purpose and to live it more intentionally every day.
9. Climate solutionism
In past years, many books about global warming and climate change both chronicled the problem as well as aimed to offer legislative or advocacy solutions. This year, a new perspective emerged regarding “solutionism.” In other words, many books provided the prescription for us actually to fix some of the human-created global environmental problems. At least this positivity focuses on what to do next instead of dissecting and assigning blame for how we got here.
10. The citizenship imperative
After a contentious election season, several books this past year aimed to help Americans rediscover their democracy and what it means to be citizens. From teaching young people about the latter to explaining topics like migration or free speech to more controversial calls to overhaul and rethink the Constitution itself, the idea that we all need to better understand and perhaps reimagine the fundamental beliefs of our government was a timely and urgent focus of many titles this past year.
11. Quiet leadership
In what might seem like the ultimate irony, several counterintuitive books this year focused on the quieter side of leadership. From embracing silence to increasing cultural intelligence and focusing on the softer side of management, the conclusion seemed to be that the noisier the world gets, the more effective leaders who buck this trend and embrace their quiet side might actually be.
12. The friendship antidote
A year ago, a range of books explored the loneliness epidemic and offered a dire warning of the negative health and emotional effects of isolation. This year, the antidote took the main stage in the form of encouraging people to forge and solidify more friendships. These books offered encouragement, tactics and perhaps most importantly, a reminder that having strong friendships requires investing the time to make them work.
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Rohit Bhargava