Whether at work or in life, a lot of my learning happens inside books. 2025 was a fun reading year for me: a mix of restaurant memoirs, scaling frameworks, team culture classics, and a couple of oldies I returned to.
Here are the best business / non-fiction books I read in 2025, loosely arranged by topic. Some are new, some are older, all are worth your time.
I would love to hear your recommendations, I am always on the hunt for the next good book.
Restaurants, hospitality, and service
Food books are still one of my favorite ways to think about startups. High stakes, big egos, service obsession, talent wars, unreasonable hours: very familiar.
Service Included: Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter – Phoebe Damrosch (2007)
Behind the scenes at Per Se, from one of the first female captains in the New York fine dining world. It is very specific about what “great service” actually looks like at a Michelin 3-star restaurant. Reading it as a founder or marketer is a good reminder that true hospitality (and brand) is a hundred tiny details that no one customer can quite articulate, but everyone can feel. Favorite quote: “The secret to service is not servitude, but anticipating desire.”
I’m Not Trying to Be Difficult – Drew Nieporent (2025)
Drew is behind Nobu, Tribeca Grill, Montrachet and a bunch of places that defined New York dining for decades. This is a generous, surprisingly un-angry memoir from someone who has every right to complain and mostly chooses not to. There are great lessons here on partnership, ego, brand, and what it really means to build institutions people keep coming back to. Favorite quote: “There’s nothing like seeing the people who have worked for you succeed.”
Why I Cook – Tom Colicchio (2024)
Colicchio writes about forty years behind a stove, from his grandfather’s garden to Top Chef. It is part memoir, part cookbook, but mostly a meditation on craft. What I took from it: the work only looks glamorous from the outside. On the inside, excellence is repetition, taste, and caring about details that most people will never see. Favorite quote: “The pace was relentless. There was a system for everything, and efficiency was king.”
[If you liked my earlier “world class” post about Ritz, CIA, and the All Blacks, these three sit very nicely next to it on the shelf.]
Giftology – John Ruhlin (2016)
On the surface this is a book about corporate gifting. Underneath it is a book about relationships: how to show up for people, how to do it thoughtfully, and how to stand out in a noisy world. If you are in sales, client services, or run a small company, you will come away energized and inspired, with a few ideas you can implement tomorrow. Favorite quote: “customers who were given a small piece of chocolate along with their check tipped more than those who hadn’t been given any.”
Scaling and building the business you actually want
Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big – Bo Burlingham (2007)
Burlingham profiles companies that deliberately decide not to chase hypergrowth and instead optimize for being great: for employees, customers, and the surrounding community. It is a nice antidote if you are tired of “grow at all costs” and want a candid portrayal of the tradeoffs of staying small. Favorite quote: “To begin with, they were all utterly determined to be the best at what they did.”
The Science of Scaling – Benjamin Hardy and Blake Erickson (2025)
Useful operational ideas, but I found parts of it affirming the worst instincts of startup culture: grow faster, compress everything, treat fun as optional. Thought provoking and worth reading, with a grain of salt.
🌟 My 2025 favorite: Winners Dream – Bill McDermott (2014)
Memoir from the CEO of ServiceNow and former CEO of SAP about the journey from a small-town deli to running two of the biggest software companies in the world. This is unabashedly inspirational, but also quite practical: there is a through-line of optimism, hard work, and obsessing over customers that feels refreshingly old school. Favorite quote: so many, here’s one – “I wasn’t smarter than any of them, and my tactics weren’t complicated. I just hustled.”
Teams, culture, and how work actually feels
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team – Patrick Lencioni (2002)
A classic for a reason. I first read it a while ago, and this year it clicked again in a new way. The simple pyramid model (trust, conflict, commitment, accountability, results) is a good way to diagnose why a leadership team “feels off” even if everyone is talented and well intentioned. Favorite quote: “Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare.”
The Advantage – Patrick Lencioni (2012)
If Five Dysfunctions is the fable, The Advantage is the textbook. It makes the case that organizational health is the biggest remaining competitive advantage and lays out a systematic approach: cohesive leadership team, clarity, over-communication, and reinforcing that clarity through systems. Helpful if your company is past ten or fifteen people and the “we just figure it out” stage is clearly over. Favorite quote: “waiting for clear confirmation that a decision is exactly right is a recipe for mediocrity and almost a guarantee of eventual failure.”
Today Was Fun: A Book About Work (Seriously) – Bree Groff (2025)
A short, very readable book that argues work should not be either our entire identity or something we simply endure, but actually fun. Favorite quote: “You don’t get paid because work is painful and people wouldn’t do it otherwise. You get paid because you create value. The pain is entirely optional!”
Risk, reputation, worry, and relationships
Last Call for Bud Light: The Fall and Future of America’s Favorite Beer – Anson Frericks (2025)
This reads like a case study in what happens when a beloved blue collar brand loses touch with its core customers and its own culture. Frericks, a former Anheuser-Busch executive, walks through years of decisions that culminated in the recent Bud Light implosion. For marketers and founders, it is a reminder that brand is a long game and that you can destroy trust much faster than you build it. Favorite quote: “Innovations that create value are useful, but copying what works well is more practical.
How to Stop Worrying and Start Living – Dale Carnegie (1948!)
I’ve been listening to this book on repeat for years. An old classic that holds up remarkably well, because it talks about universal, old-as-time truths, and provides concrete techniques to worry less and act more, with lots of stories from “regular” people. In a world of constant news, fundraising pressure, and dashboard watching, this felt like a necessary reset. Favorite quote: the entire book, but let’s take this one: “Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
More book recommendations from previous years. 🙂
