Wharton@Work

December 2025 | 

This Year’s Must-Reads from Wharton Faculty

This Year’s Must-Reads from Wharton Faculty

The newest edition of our faculty reading recommendations showcases the books that provoked fresh thinking, expanded horizons, and earned a place on nightstands and carry-on bags across the Wharton community. This year’s picks reflect a mix of bold scholarship, vivid storytelling, and timely insights that continued to resonate long after the last page. Whether you’re looking to sharpen your thinking, broaden your perspective, or simply enjoy a compelling read, these selections offer something for every curious mind.

Marketing professor Stefano Puntoni recommends Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (Simon & Schuster, 2004). The biography by Walter Isaacson “reminds us of the civic virtues this country was built on, and of the importance of moderation and dialogue in public life.” Professor Puntoni, who co-directs Generative AI and Business Transformation, also notes Franklin’s role as founder of the University of Pennsylvania, saying the book “reminds us of the roots of our institution: the Enlightenment’s belief that progress is possible.”

Samir Nurmohamad, who has won numerous teaching awards and shares his management research with participants in the Advanced Management Program and Executive Development Program, says The Family Dynamic by Susan Dominus (Crown, 2025) “makes a compelling case for why siblings — rather than parents — have an outsized influence on shaping children in families with more than one child. It makes me wonder about how leaders can more effectively tap into coworkers to influence others, rather than thinking it has to come from themselves.”

Neuroscientist Michael Platt, a self-professed fan of Gary Shteyngart, is “captivated” by his new work, Vera, or Faith (Random House, 2025). “This novel is set in a near-future dystopia of self-driving cars, robots, and AI, which is more and more relatable for all of us. Told from the perspective of a precocious, multi-ethnic little girl, the novel is both poignant and penetrating on issues of class, autonomy, and meaning in an increasingly disconnected, automated life. The linguistic style evokes Nabokov, which resonates deeply with me since he is another one of my favorite authors.”

Professor Gideon Nave, who teaches in the Analytics for Strategic Growth: AI, Smart Data, and Customer Insights and new AI in Marketing: Creating Customer Value in an AI-Driven Enterprise programs, recommends I Told You So!: Scientists Who Were Ridiculed, Exiled, and Imprisoned for Being Right, by Matt Kaplan (St. Martin’s Press, 2026). “As a scientist who deeply values evidence and intellectual honesty, I found this book both surprising and meaningful because it exposes how often progress in science depends not only on data, but on the courage to challenge entrenched norms. It’s a powerful reminder that even in our quest for truth, human ego and institutional inertia can be the biggest barriers to getting things right.”

Kevin Werbach, professor and chair of the Legal Studies & Business Ethics department and director of the Strategies for Accountable AI program, cites Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future, by Dan Wang (W. W. Norton & Co., 2025). This bestseller, shortlisted for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award, explores China’s breakneck pace of development and its culture of large-scale engineering ambition. Wang contrasts it with a U.S. system that increasingly defaults to legal barriers and hesitation. Blending analysis and reportage, he offers a provocative framework for understanding both nations — and what their diverging approaches mean for the future.

Management professor Emilie Feldman, whose research focuses on corporate strategy and governance and who directs the Global C-Suite Program, says, “I recently enjoyed A CEO for All Seasons: Mastering the Cycle of Leadership" (Scribner/Simon & Schuster, 2025). The authors, four senior partners at McKinsey, offer “great insights into the different stages of CEO lifecycles.”

Arthur Van Benthem, professor of Business Economics and Public Policy, recommends Wharton colleague Judd Kessler’s Lucky by Design: The Hidden Economics You Need to Get More of What You Want (Little, Brown Spark, 2025). Wharton@Work recently interviewed Professor Kessler about his book, which provides insights and practical advice for navigating hidden markets that “arise to decide who gets what when many of us want something and there isn’t enough to go around.” Read the story here.

Vice dean and faculty director of Wharton’s Impact, Value, and Sustainable Business Initiative Witold Henisz, says, “because we all need some hope these days, we can learn from the efforts to build a way out of the political polarization and violence of the 1920s in John Fabian Witt's The Radical Fund: How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended America” (Simon & Schuster, 2025). Witt, a historian and Yale Law School professor, uncovers the secret history of the Garland Fund, a bold philanthropic venture started in 1922 that backed visionary activists and helped transform once-heretical ideas into mass movements reshaping American democracy.