Dec 17, 2025
It is difficult to choose top books for the year — not the least because this is my first time publishing such a list. However, as promised last week, here is a list of books that are subjectively worth sharing.
This book is about the stock market crash of 1929 and touches on the Great Depression that followed. The author has reconstructed a day-by-day account of the dealmaking, brinkmanship and fragility of the Wall Street bigwigs of the age. It is also a timely read given the fears about an AI bubble, which we talked about last month.
This book takes you on a captivating ride from the beginnings of the semiconductor industry to the present day. Semiconductors had somewhat faded from public consciousness until the 2020-2023 global chip shortage. However, the industry is as competitive and fast-moving as ever, and increasingly intertwined with geopolitics.
This book about venture capital pits the viewpoints of a founder against those of an investor. Founders and investors often do not see eye-to-eye on topics such as money, valuation, control, exits, etc. The authors use a dialogue format to bring out their agreements, disagreements and everything in between.
California rose from a Western frontier to the epicenter of American innovation in a rather short time. Its history is replete with societal upheavals, frontier spirit and boom-and-bust cycles. This book examines California’s history, and brings the reader to the challenges and opportunities of today.
Nvidia’s hardware was behind AlexNet — a groundbreaking image classifier released in 2012 — that kicked off a renaissance in deep learning. Nvidia and its longtime CEO, Jensen Huang, have not caught a breath since. This book presents a gripping tale about Huang, Nvidia and the rise of AI.