Marshall McLuhan argued that “the medium is the message,” that the form a message takes is more important than the content it delivers. As booksellers, we are not going to discount the importance of content—indeed, we do much to spread and celebrate the content we find in books—nor will we denigrate other forms of media. Still, we believe that books remain the best medium we have for making sense of the world and our place in it. Even in an era of artificial intelligence, books authored by humans are still the best technology for conveying detailed information and complex ideas across time and space, for developing cognitive skills critical to our individual and collective flourishing, and for preserving, transmitting, and retaining knowledge in our increasingly distracted, screen-dominated world. We firmly believe that we would make more progress as a society in addressing the collective challenges we face if more people—especially those in leadership positions—put down their phones more often and picked up more books, and we have some recommendations.  

Each of the 40 books featured in the 2025 Porchlight Business Book Awards cuts through the cacophony of other media, focuses our attention on an important issue or story, and offers a more thoughtful path to creating a free, fair, and prosperous future for all. 

As our Managing Director, Sally Haldorson, recently said:  

Taken together, these 40 books offer a kind of panoramic view of the world we’re building. You see the pressures, the possibilities, and the ideas that will meaningfully shape the years ahead. And running through all of them is a shared belief: the future is not something hurtling toward us, but something we actively influence. They offer practical ways to make better ethical, strategic, and humane decisions—and to take the kind of purposeful action that supports stronger organizations, healthier communities, and a more hopeful future.