A surprising truth lies buried beneath the flood of business books published every year. Despite the 200,000-plus business and economics titles that are self-published, hybrid-published, or traditionally published annually — despite the explosion of advice, leadership frameworks, and visionary manifestos flooding the market — most corporate leaders aren’t reading them. Even more striking, they aren’t particularly interested in doing so.
Publishing data tells a clear story. Only about 20% of business books purchased are ever even opened. Of those, perhaps 5% are read to completion. The average traditionally published business book sells fewer than 500 copies over its lifetime. Self-published books fare even worse. And yet, the myth persists that leaders are voracious readers — devouring 52 books a year, one every week, filling their minds with fresh ideas and insights. It’s a compelling image, but largely a fiction.
In truth, leaders today, even those who are among the most educated in history, read fewer serious books than the generations that came before them. Many have quietly concluded that reading business books, no matter how well-intentioned, will not materially advance their careers or help them lead more effectively. In some cases, they’re not wrong. Much of the modern business book market has become a platform for self-promotion, ego inflation, and personal branding. Many titles are less about offering genuine wisdom and more about marketing the author.
But dismissing all business literature is a profound failure of knowledge and a dangerous one.
We have been warned about this before.
H.G. Wells observed that “human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.” Aldous Huxley took it further, suggesting that the ultimate threat wasn’t oppression but a distracted society, laughing without knowing why it laughs, anesthetized by triviality and spectacle. Marshall McLuhan, whose work remains prophetic, warned us that the media environment itself becomes the message, reshaping human consciousness without conscious thought.
Today’s leaders operate in exactly that world: hyper-accelerated, image-driven, shaped by market sentiment and shareholder demands. Many have ceased thinking deeply not because they are lazy or incompetent, but because Wall Street investors are doing the thinking for them. Quarterly earnings, stock price movements, activist shareholders — these forces leave little room, and even less reward, for reflective leadership. Strategic patience and philosophical curiosity are liabilities in a marketplace that demands immediate, visible returns.
In such a climate, who has the luxury to slow down and read? Who dares to ask larger questions about meaning, human development, and the future of society when today’s value is measured in this quarter’s EBITDA?
Yet it is precisely at this moment — a moment defined by profound transformation — that leaders must find a way back to thoughtfulness. Artificial Intelligence and machine intelligence are not incremental changes. They are existential shifts that will redefine human work, creativity, and organizational life. The leaders who survive and thrive in the age of AI will not be those who blindly optimize the next efficiency. They will be the ones who rethink, who reimagine, and who have prepared themselves with blueprints for navigating the unknown.
Of course, I am conscious that these arguments may seem self-serving. I have written two of those books myself — The Tao of Leadership in the AI Era and Creativity Unleashed, because I believe, profoundly, that there is still a path forward for human-centric, wisdom-driven leadership. But the truth is broader than any single author or title. Among the endless sea of business books, there remain a few — a precious few — that offer genuine guidance for this new era. They don’t offer quick fixes. They offer frameworks for enduring transformation, rooted in history, philosophy, human psychology, and the ethics of technological integration.
The crisis we face is not that people have stopped laughing, as Huxley warned, but that they have stopped knowing why they laugh — or why they work, or lead, or build. It is not that leaders lack intelligence. It is that intelligence has become reactive, optimized for survival in a system that no longer rewards depth, introspection, or bold independent thought.
The irony is that the machine era demands precisely those capacities. Machines will outperform humans in calculation, prediction, and even optimization. What they cannot replicate, not yet and perhaps never, is original, courageous, human-centered thinking. That thinking, historically, has been nourished by books. Not by every book. Not by the flood of lightweight titles chasing the zeitgeist. But by the few that challenge leaders to become more than just managers of processes — to become architects of future societies.
It is time for leaders to read again. Selectively, yes. Skeptically, absolutely. But seriously. Because education is still racing against catastrophe. Because leadership without reflection is not leadership at all. Because in the age of AI, the human mind must become not just faster, but wiser.
It is no longer a luxury. It is a necessity. I invite – encourage – you to visit my Amazon author page and explore the #1 best-selling new business book on leadership in the AI era. Amazon.com: Jack Myers: books, biography, latest update
