Six books to drive perspective (Reading List May 2025)

I spend most of my flexible time reading books, yet I often find myself thinking about my inability to navigate challenges when they arise. A wrong response, hurt feelings, negative thinking, resentment or ego. I mentioned this irony to a friend this week. “It could have been worse,” he said, “imagine if you didn’t read those books, how much longer and worse it would have been to overcome whatever you’re going through?”

It sounded right. Books or any type of new knowledge could help us cope or drive a short-term response, but their real value is in long-term investment. In the long run, knowledge gives us control and choice. It gives us awareness to separate external circumstances from our decision-making. I take my time to choose the right books, and these are the ones I’ve read in the past month:

Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI by Ethan Mollick - It’s not a surprise that when we think about AI we are only imagining all these fiction movies where robots take us over, and the world dramatically ends, or maybe less dramatic, like losing our jobs (I think about the movie Her which is creepy enough and you can already start doing it today using Grok voiceover). However, this book is one great thing I’ve read to calm my mind and ignore the noise on social media. The Industrial Revolution brought an 18-22 per cent increase in labour productivity. Now, with AI, we're seeing productivity increases of up to 80 percent, and it’s mostly affecting the output in career-tier jobs. However, Mollick argues for the need to start adopting AI fast and think abundantly about it. Need an idea to move a project forward? Ask AI for ten options and rank them. Developing a comprehensive project plan for a leadership report? Ask AI twenty different ways the project can be challenged. Mollick’s argument is not only that you will do things better with AI, but you're uniquely positioned to leverage it in your field since you alone understand the nuances of your profession. I don’t use AI for writing, which is killing the entire purpose of my benefit from it, but I do ask for its perspective during editing. There will always be a need to be the human in the loop.

The Lion Tracker's Guide to Life by Boyd Varty - Joseph Campbell said, “If you can see your whole life’s path laid out, then it’s not your life’s path”. A great and unconventional book on leadership that came out from Boyd's experience as a safari guide in South Africa, which led him to become a life coach. This book is full of gems. It’s a light and wonderful read on the importance of finding your own tracker in life, and how we have forgotten that life holds a unique story for each of us. What I also appreciate about this story is the importance of hardship and how sometimes it is necessary to get lost to bring out our best, or as Varty says, “the hazard of modern times is the danger of no danger”. The world is waiting for us to discover our path and be one of those masters who can “be themselves in any situation,” and also appreciate “look at the thing you have seen a thousand times and always see something new”. A highly recommended read, I learned about Varty by reading Martha Beck’s "The Way of Integrity" (also an amazing book).

Of Boys and Men: Why the modern male is struggling, why it matters, and what to do about it by Richard Reeves - My girlfriend recommended this book because Richard Reeves was coming to town and she was hosting him for a talk on male gender dynamics. Once I started reading, I couldn’t put the book down. I was unaware of the statistics documenting male decline, and how this trend affects lower socioeconomic classes while also touching my own life and community. In our capitalist, workaholic culture, even as we've made progress toward gender equality, we're seeing growing numbers of lonely, directionless men drawn to toxic communities like incels, violence, and misogyny (If you haven’t watched Adolescence, you’re missing out). Worse still, both left and right-wing political parties are exacerbating the imbalance with counterproductive approaches. On the left side, we are kind of telling men, “you’re lonely and suicidal because you’re toxic. Stop it!” On the right side, we reminisce about the old days when men were the household breadwinners. Both sides are equally unhelpful. Instead, Reeves brings some pragmatic proposals to tackle the struggle of men constructively (He also launched the American Institute for Boys and Men, worth checking!).

Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process by John McPhee - I’m looking for ways to improve my nonfiction writing, and John McPhee is a literature legend of transforming ordinary topics into the most compelling narratives (If you don’t believe me you can check his book about Oranges). In Draft No. 4, he describes his insights from writing more than thirty acclaimed works. Detailing how he interviewed, created, and compiled fascinating stories, as well as his approach to the structuring stories. What inspires me the most about his story is the ability to be consistent not only in his writing habit but also in his unconventional thinking to find the right words to say (even using dictionaries to find the meaning of certain words and replacing them with a deeper description). I will have this book present as a reminder of exploration and creativity.

Chatter: The Voice in Our Head (And How to Harness It) by Ethan Kross - I was struggling to balance personal life with professional changes while battling impostor syndrome. I threw it out there to a friend, saying that it was this voice in my head telling me that I wasn’t enough. Her immediate response was, “You should read Chatter,” nodding her head convincingly. I ordered it immediately. What a book! We all have an inner voice, an avid time traveller and relentless critic. Chatter is a form of repetitive, anxious thought and a marvellous saboteur that comes during focused tasks. How often do we revisit moments with guilt, pain, or regret over thoughts or things someone said to us? How often do we enter a meeting to say crucial things, audition or competition, only to feel like we are failing right from the start? Moreover, how much mental baggage do we carry from our family, friends, colleagues, and society, and how do we find ways to deal with them? It’s all in our heads, and Kross sorts it in his book with a clear, well-written framework, historical record, and many ways to deal with the chatter in our minds.

Leadership in Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin - I'm drawn to American presidential history and its overcoming stories. This book is a mark in my life and is easily one of the best ones I have ever read. I have highlighted most of the pages. Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin brings a fascinating narrative on four presidents that shaped the nation during crucial periods: Abraham Lincoln during the 1862 Emancipation Proclamation, Theodore Roosevelt in the 1902 coal strike, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first hundred days amid the 1933 Great Depression, and Lyndon B. Johnson during the 1964 Civil Rights Movement. The fascinating part is how Goodwin masterfully connects the upbringings of each president, their sense of ambition, their intense adversities and their method for crisis management. The patterns across the book are striking, from Lincoln’s melancholy and constant depression to Teddy’s struggles with debilitating asthma, to FDR’s ability to face poliomyelitis and keep his political life active, to LBJ's twenty-hour days and extraordinary skill to get things done. The four of them keeping ambition high while facing multiple failures. Each one offers lessons applicable to our own challenges. This book rewards reading at any stage of life.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on these ideas. The best books you can read come to you through word of mouth, so if you know a good titles that relate, please share them! If any of these resonate with you, pass them along.