After we released our awards longlist this year, a friend of ours in publishing wrote to us that they were “struck by the overwhelming and nearly unanimous negativity of the Current Events category.” It was an astute observation and a fair point. Our society is saturated in bad news. There is a negativity bias that plagues much of the news ecosystem, with online platforms’ algorithms and cable news outlets relying on rage-bait to keep their audiences in thrall. Are we only adding to it?    

I would argue that the ten books in our Current Events & Public Affairs category aren’t of that ilk. Yes, they focus primarily on the challenges (i.e., problems) we face, and they don’t shy away from naming clearly who they find responsible for them. But identifying where individual businesses and, indeed, entire industries are undermining our shared prosperity and collective ability to flourish is the first step to correcting course. Each of the books on this list offers actionable ideas on how to do so.    

Below, you'll find links to excerpts from each of the books in the Current Events & Public Affairs category of the 2025 Porchlight Busines Book Awards.

Excerpts from the Best Current Events & Public Affairs Books of 2025

• The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity by Tim Wu, Knopf Publishing Group  
• Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream by Megan Greenwell, Dey Street Books
• Capitalism and Its Critics: A History: From the Industrial Revolution to AI by John Cassidy, Farrar, Straus and Giroux  
• Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI by Karen Hao, Penguin Press  
• Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It by Cory Doctorow, MCD  
• The Land Trap: A New History of the World’s Oldest Asset by Mike Bird, Portfolio 
• Reaping What She Sows: How Women Are Rebuilding Our Broken Food System by Nancy Matsumoto, Melville House  
• Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity by Yoni Appelbaum, Random House  
• Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart by Nicholas Carr, W.W. Norton & Company  
• World Eaters: How Venture Capital Is Cannibalizing the Economy by Catherine Bracy, Dutton 

When society is sick—which is the one thing that people on all sides of the political spectrum seem to agree on—the first step is diagnosis. We believe that, taken individually on their own merits and considered collectively, these ten books offer an incredibly accurate diagnosis of how business has contributed to undermining the health of our economy and body politic, and provide a better way forward. As we’ve always said, sometimes the best business books aren’t boosters of business, but show us how we can do better by pointing to where we’re falling short.    

AI, industrial-scale agriculture, income inequality, social media, housing prices, private equity, and venture capital; none of these are inherently evil, but the current direction of each is, to say the least, concerning. We did get one hopeful book about women in regenerative agriculture on the list, and if we can move toward more regenerative forms of finance and technology development—and away from the extractive, inequality-exacerbating models that are driving the current development and investment in them—then we should see some books that reflect those positive developments in future years. I certainly hope we do! Until then, we bring you books in which hope resides in how we might solve the problems they so clearly pose. We hope you find the excerpts linked above insightful, and that you'll spread the word about these great books—and any others you believe will help inspire positive change.