Top AI Books to Read in 2025
Which non-technical AI books matter in 2025? 📚 An ecosystem and review analysis. 🏞️
This is the first edition in a new series on the best AI books.
I’m a huge fan of celebrating the Books written by people in our community around AI. Books go deeper than Newsletter articles about specific aspects of AI and encompass months or even years of research, instead of days or hours. I asked
of AI Book Review to help us discover some of the best in recent times.This is a chance to celebrate some of the authors and makers of these books and show our support.
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AI Book Review
Distilling the ideas that matter from the ocean of AI writing and media.
Paul’s project is all-encompassing: he believes:
AI is many things - not one, constant thing
AI is connected to wider changes - it doesn’t exist in a vacuum
AI has the power to be massively beneficial, and damaging
AI works well where there is careful design and deep knowledge
We need to be smart to make the most of this opportunity
Something special is happening right now
The future is unknown to all
Support his project:
In an age of increasing AI slop and synthetic shallow content, I believe in supporting book culture. Paul is doing great work.
Q&A Snippet 💡
How did you get here? Paul Morrison: I have worked as a business and technology adviser for over two decades (out of London). I help companies to work smarter and make the most of new technologies. Research has always been a part of this, including podcasting and writing for leading tech companies such as Accenture, Hewlett Packard and WNS. For nearly 10 years I led the Hackett Digital Awards, shining a light on the most measurably impactful analytics, automation and AI projects from businesses around the world.
Pictured above:
writes the popular Newsletter, Jam with AI.Go to Paul’s Newsletter to learn more:
Read Reviews
Recent Short book reviews by Paul. AI Book Review is a relatively new Newsletter, and is part of my commitment to supporting emerging writers.
Q&A Snippet 👀
How does AI fit in? Paul Morrison: Over this period, the ‘technology question’ has become ever louder. The since 2022 it has been amazing to see powerful, artificial intelligence come into full view. For all of us it is an exciting or even unsettling time. One question stands out - how will AI change the way we live and work? As a father of 3, I can feel just how much depends on this.
For this list Paul decided to exclude technical Machine Learning books to focus on AI books for non-technical readers. Many of my readers of AI Supremacy are also AI enthusiasts who may not necessarily have a technical background.
The Top 20 AI Books of 2025
By
, October, 2025.So many AI books, so little time! To help all you busy readers uncover the titles that really resonate for you, welcome to our perspectives on the Top 20 AI books of 2025. Plus in the sections below we provide new analysis of the overall landscape, and a mini-capsule with links for each book.
The Top 20 is based on a mix of art and science. The science consists of the 15 most popular AI books on Amazon and Goodreads, as of late 2025. These are the AI books that have proven themselves with readers as relevant, engaging and high quality. This crop of outstanding AI writing paints a picture of what we want to read. 4 different preoccupations emerge:
Navigating AI - The fundamentals - what is AI and what does it mean?
Boom versus Doom - Will AI make or break humanity?
AI at Work - Unpacking what AI means for business
Movers and Shakers - The stories behind AI’s leading personalities and businesses
The art comes in the form of 5 additional ‘Wildcards’ - books too offbeat to feature in the bestseller lists (yet), or that look up at the horizons of the world in which AI will grow. Together they provide context and challenge to the bestseller canon.
Congratulations to all the listed books (listed alphabetically by title below)! Of course there are great books that didn’t make this list. Some by accident, and others by design - for example technical manuals and fiction are excluded (another time!).
Let us know what you loved this year, what you hated, and what you want to read about next year!
OR
Q&A Snippet 🔎
What is AI Book Review? Paul Morrison: There are a lot of AI books out there! But people don’t have time to read dozens of AI books. So AI Book Review’s mission is to distill what really matters from the best writing, old and new.
The goal is to do this differently. There are obviously other sources of book reviews. But by obsessing about AI books, I want to provide a resource that tracks the debate over time and across authors: How are leading writers thinking about AI? How do they differ? How is the debate changing? What are the gaps? What is the big picture?
THE LIST: Top 20 AI Books of 2025 - The Winners
First let’s frame some of the standout books we found in our analysis:
Navigating AI 🗺️
How To Think About AI: A Guide For The Perplexed - Richard Susskind
The Scaling Era: An Oral History of AI, 2019–2025 - Dwarkesh Patel , Gavin Leech
These Strange New Minds: How AI Learned to Talk and What It Means - Christopher Summerfield
Boom vs Doom 💥
If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All - Eliezer Yudkowsky, Nate Soares.
More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity - Adam Becker
Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future - Reid Hoffman, Greg Beato
The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want - Emily M. Bender, Alex Hanna
AI at Work 🚧
Agentic Artificial Intelligence: Harnessing AI Agents to Reinvent Business, Work and Life - Pascal Bornet, Jochen Wirtz, Tom Davenport, David De Cremer, Brian Evergreen, Phil Fersht, Rakesh Gohel, Shail Khiyara, Nandan Mullakara, Pooja Sund
AI First: The Playbook for a Future-Proof Business and Brand - Adam Brotman, Andy Sack
More Human: How the Power of AI Can Transform the Way You Lead - Rasmus Hougaard, Jacqueline Carter, Marissa Afton, Rob Stembridge
Reshuffle: Who wins when AI restacks the knowledge economy - Sangeet Paul Choudary
Movers and Shakers 🏃
AI Valley: Microsoft, Google, and the Trillion-Dollar Race to Cash In on Artificial Intelligence - Gary Rivlin
Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI - Karen Hao
The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future - Keach Hagey
The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World’s Most Coveted Microchip - Stephen Witt
Wildcards 🐾
Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity - Paul Kingsnorth
Beast in the Machine: How Robotics and AI Will Transform Warfare and the Future of Human Conflict - George M. Dougherty
Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future - Dan Wang
The Light Eaters: How the New Science of Plant Intelligence Extends Our View of Life on Earth - Zoë Schlanger
The Uncanny Muse: Music, Art, and Machines from Automata to AI - David Hajdu
DIGGING DEEPER (1) - Behind the Numbers
To work out our list of the bestsellers, we crunched the reader review numbers on Goodreads and Amazon. First up we looked at the total number of reviewer ratings on these platforms:
To be clear, all books have done very well to feature in this select group - they have all in their different ways made a dent in the AI debate. However the standout result is Empire of AI by Karen Hao , an excoriating behind the scenes account of OpenAI. This is easily the most rated book of the year both for Amazon and Goodreads (the scale above is logarithmic so the gaps are exponential!).
Empire of AI is followed by The Thinking Machine (Stephen Witt’s unpacking of Jensen Huang and Nvidia), and Superagency (Reid Hoffman and Greg Beato on ‘What Could Possibly Go Right With AI’). Along with The Optimist by Keach Hagey (a more positive interpretation of the OpenAI story), 3 out of 4 of the top books are about ‘Movers and Shakers’: biographies / business biographies that tell the story of the AI industry’s icons.
In our second analysis, we move beyond total number of ratings to average reader scores, and the picture is somewhat different. Again all books in this analysis are strong performers. Leading the pack is
Sangeet Paul Choudary’s Reshuffle, on sidestepping the AGI/intelligence debate to focus instead on how AI is changing the systems that underpin work and life. Not far behind are The Thinking Machine, and More Everything Forever by Adam Becker.
The biggest anomaly in the data is Superagency - Amazon readers are much keener on this book than are Goodreads readers. Richard Susskind’s ‘How to Think about AI’ is the opposite. For the most part other titles show no such difference… Who knew?!
Note on approach: Books focused on AI first published in 2025. Titles with limited reviews excluded. Data accurate as of September 2025.
Editor’s Note
In our next edition of the series we’ll dig deeper into the AI Book Universe and give a more editorial summary of each one on our list of 20.
So obviously this is not just a listicle but an actual analysis of the creative landscape of AI books that also charts how humanity’s fascination with the topic of AI is evolving in 2025 and as we head into 2026 and beyond.
Thanks to all the incredible book authors listed here, and those that we missed. You help to give us clarity in very uncertain times.
Who wins when AI restacks the knowledge economy:
Top 20 - Books on Navigating AI
Continues more next time.
Q&A Snippet 🌄
How would you describe your views? Paul Morrison: I feel I have a pretty eclectic outlook, with a foot in many camps. I have a background in systems building, a business adviser’s preoccupation with real ROI, and the long term view of a history undergrad. It is a broad mix but hopefully one that enables me to root out what really matters. I don’t see myself as a techno booster or doomer, rather an optimist and a humanist. And whilst I see that technology is often a force for good, I recognise we can take little for granted with AI today.
Happy reading. 📚
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Appreciating your support of my Newsletter and the guest contributors like Paul who extend our coverage in new directions and learning.
Addendum - Appendix
If you want to go to a store page, follow the links:
Directory - Who made the list: 🙋🏻♀️
How To Think About AI: A Guide For The Perplexed - Richard Susskind
The Scaling Era: An Oral History of AI, 2019–2025 - Dwarkesh Patel , Gavin Leech
These Strange New Minds: How AI Learned to Talk and What It Means - Christopher Summerfield
If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All - Eliezer Yudkowsky, Nate Soares.
More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity - Adam Becker
Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future - Reid Hoffman, Greg Beato
The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want - Emily M. Bender, Alex Hanna
Agentic Artificial Intelligence: Harnessing AI Agents to Reinvent Business, Work and Life - Pascal Bornet, Jochen Wirtz, Tom Davenport, David De Cremer, Brian Evergreen, Phil Fersht, Rakesh Gohel, Shail Khiyara, Nandan Mullakara, Pooja Sund
AI First: The Playbook for a Future-Proof Business and Brand - Adam Brotman, Andy Sack
More Human: How the Power of AI Can Transform the Way You Lead - Rasmus Hougaard, Jacqueline Carter, Marissa Afton, Rob Stembridge
Reshuffle: Who wins when AI restacks the knowledge economy - Sangeet Paul Choudary
AI Valley: Microsoft, Google, and the Trillion-Dollar Race to Cash In on Artificial Intelligence - Gary Rivlin
Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI - Karen Hao
The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future - Keach Hagey
The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World’s Most Coveted Microchip - Stephen Witt
Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity - Paul Kingsnorth
Beast in the Machine: How Robotics and AI Will Transform Warfare and the Future of Human Conflict - George M. Dougherty
Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future - Dan Wang
The Light Eaters: How the New Science of Plant Intelligence Extends Our View of Life on Earth - Zoë Schlanger
The Uncanny Muse: Music, Art, and Machines from Automata to AI - David Hajdu
Section 2 of Appendix: Newsletters of Authors if they Exist on Substack
In no particular order:
1. The Abbey of Misrule
By
2. Dwarkesh Podcast
By
3. Irreplaceable with AI
By
4. Platforms, AI, and the Economies of BigTech
By
5. Tom Davenport’s Substack
By
Section 3 of Appendix: Notable Mentions
Did I forget someone? For this article the author focused on more recent books but we may have missed some newer ones. Also I have sought to add some depth by introducing books by authors who are on Substack that should be mentioned. I have tagged then when possible.
I’ve updated some new releases in the following list up to October, 2025. But also some of the all-time best.
Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI - Yuval Noah Harari (2024) - Recommended from our Chat.
What You Need to Know About AI: A Primer on Being Human in an Artificially Intelligent World -
(October, 2025)AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference - by
and (Sept, 2024) - Newsletter is now called AI as Normal TechnologyBuild a Large Language Model (From Scratch) -
(Sept, 2024)Governing the Machine: How to navigate the risks of AI and unlock its true potential - Ray Eitel-Porter, etc… (Oct, 2025) by
Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech -
(2023)Abundance - Ezra Klein and
(2025)Raising AI: An Essential Guide to Parenting Our Future -
(June, 2025)Machine Decision Is Not Final: China and the History and Future of Artificial Intelligence -
(Nov, 2025)Agentic Artificial Intelligence: Harnessing AI Agents to Reinvent Business, Work and Life -
(March, 2025)Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans -
(October, 2019)Flash Teams: Leading the Future of AI-Enhanced, On-Demand Work - Melissa Valentine, etc.. ((Oct, 2025)
Genesis: Artificial Intelligence, Hope, and the Human Spirit - Henry A. Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, etc.. (November, 2024)
The AI-Driven Leader: Harnessing AI to Make Faster, Smarter Decisions - Geoff Woods (Sept, 2024)
AI RISING: How To Thrive In The Age Of Abundance - Randy Kirk, etc… (Oct, 2025)
The AI Universe: Thriving Within Civilization’s Next Big Disruption - Erik Seversen, (2025)
Business is War: AI is the New Weapon - JT Foxx, etc… (Sept, 2025)
The Road to Conscious Machines: The Story of AI - Michael Wooldridge (March, 2021)
All Hands on Tech - Ian Barkin, Tom Davenport (Sept, 2024)
The Coming Wave: AI, Power, and Our Future, Mustafa Suleyman (2023)
How AI Ate the World: A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence - And Its Long Future - Chris Stokel-Walker (May, 2024)
Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence - Kate Crawford (2021, updated in 2025)
AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order - Kai-Fu Lee (2018)
AI First - Adam Brotman, Andy Sack (June, 2025)
Is the Algorithm Plotting Against Us? A Layperson’s Guide to the Concepts, Math, and Pitfalls of AI - Kenneth Wenger (May, 2023)
The Nvidia Way - Tae Kim (2024)
The Atomic Human - Neil Lawrence
The Worlds I See - Fei-Fei Li (2023)
Co-Intelligence - Ethan Mollick (2024)
Supremacy - Parmy Olson (2024)
These Strange New Minds: How AI Learned to Talk and What It - Christopher Summerfield (March, 2025).
How to Think about AI - Richard Susskind
A World Without Work: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond - Daniel Susskind (Jan, 2020)
Life 3.0 — Max Tegmark (August, 2017)
Me, My Customer and AI - Henrik Werdelin (August, 2025)
Designing Agentic AI Systems: Patterns, Protocols, and Frameworks for LangGraph, MCP, and AutoGen (Agentic Systems & AI Pipelines) - Todd Chandler (June, 2025)
The Agentic AI Bible: The Complete and Up-to-Date Guide to Design, Build, and Scale Goal-Driven, LLM-Powered Agents that Think, Execute and Evolve - Thomas R. Caldwell (August, 2025)
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This is a great list!
that’s such a good rundown, honestly. made me rethink a couple things about ai books + how to pick what really matters—appreciate you taking time to make this, michael.