Books of 2025: Part 2

Julie Eng, CTO of Coherent

One memorable book I read this year was The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World’s Most Coveted Microchip, by Stephen Witt. This book is worth reading, as it covers the formation and evolution of Nvidia, a company that is obviously very influential in photonics for optical networking in AI data centres.

I also read The Lost and the Found: A True Story of Homelessness, Found Family, and Second Chances, by Kevin Fagan, a San Francisco Chronicle reporter who wrote about homelessness in San Francisco. I also enjoyed The First Ladies by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray, which was a fascinating portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt working with Mary McLeod Bethune for civil rights in the US.

There is also The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier’s Education by Craig Mullaney. Craig is my colleague, and this book summarises his path through West Point to active duty.

I really appreciated this book, both because I learned more about my colleague’s life and experiences, and because my brother was in the military during wartime, which helped me gain better insight into his experiences.

I’m reading There’s Got to Be a Better Way: How to Deliver Results and Get Rid of the Stuff That Gets in the Way of Real Work by Nelson Repenning and Donald Kieffer. It’s about dynamic work design and how to lead a modern company to better results. I’ve started this one, so maybe I can report on it next year.

On re-reading this list, I’ve read mostly non-fiction or historical fiction this year. Maybe I’ll read more fiction in 2026.

Helen Xenos, Senior Director, Portfolio Marketing, Ciena

I chose a career in engineering some 30 years ago because I wanted to understand how things work. (Unsurprisingly, my favourite books are mystery books.)

More recently, my curiosity has expanded from how things work to how people work.

I have become fascinated by the science of human behaviour and what drives positive, lasting change.

This interest has blossomed with the wealth of podcasts now exploring these topics, which have introduced me to insightful books in this field.

My favourite book of 2025 is Changeable: How Collaborative Problem Solving Changes Lives at Home, at School, and at Work, by J. Stuart Ablon, PhD. It offers a mindset shift and presents an alternative to traditional reward-and-punishment approaches for addressing challenging behaviour in children—and adults. One of its interesting ideas is the notion that people who struggle with problem behaviour “lack skill, not will”, and “if they could do better, they would”. Ablon outlines how Collaborative Problem Solving can not only reduce conflicts but also strengthen the underlying executive function skills needed for long-term success, positively transforming interactions at home, in schools, and in the workplace.

At a time when developmental and behavioural challenges are rising dramatically, I found this book’s insights relevant and profoundly hopeful.

Hojjat Salemi, Chief Business Development Officer, Ranovus

There is much noise these days about US–China relations and who will dominate the world with AI. We get bombarded with headlines, hot takes, and opinions. This year, two books stood out to me. One is Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future, by Dan Wang, and the other is Reshuffle: Who wins when AI restacks the knowledge economy, from one of my favourite thinkers, Sangeet Paul Choudary.

In Breakneck, Dan Wang explains China’s rise simply and powerfully. He describes China as an ‘engineering state’ — a place where the focus is on building, executing, and iterating quickly (i.e., Engineers are in charge). That mindset has enabled China to roll out high-speed rail, factories, and infrastructure at a pace the rest of the world watches with envy. He contrasts this with the US, which he calls a ‘lawyerly state,’ where even a single energy or rail project can get stuck for years in environmental assessments, zoning debates, and legal challenges. These systems exist for a reason, but they slow the country’s ability to lay the foundations for the next era of technology and industry. This was clear to me when I landed at St. Louis Airport and attended the recent Supercomputing 25 (SC25) conference and exhibition. This comparison gives a clean lens for understanding why some nations move quickly while others struggle to keep up. The book also highlights the downside of the China’s approach.

In Reshuffle, Sangeet Choudary examines a different transformation — the restructuring of global value chains through platforms, data, and ecosystems. He makes a strong case that the centre of gravity is shifting from companies that “own everything” to companies that orchestrate networks and interactions. Scale now comes from ecosystems, not vertical integration.

When you read both Breakneck and Reshuffle, you see two parallel forces shaping the world: China racing ahead in physical and industrial build-out, and global companies reshaping competition through digital platforms and ecosystem advantage. One book explains the speed of building; the other explains the logic of reorganising. Together, they offer a framework for understanding where technology, strategy, and global competition are heading.

Stephen Hardy, former editorial director of Lightwave

While it would be an exaggeration to state that half of the optical communications community plays the guitar, it would be difficult to swing a patch chord of decent length within a session at OFC and not strike someone who does. As I would be one such person were I still going to OFC, it is perhaps no surprise that I eagerly read I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution, an oral history compiled by Rob Tannenbaum and Craig Marks that recounts the first dozen years of that onetime music video channel.

Scores of executives, recording artists, video directors, former Monkees, producers, etc., offer their often-conflicting viewpoints on MTV’s creation and evolution. Of course, there’s plenty of sex, drugs, rock and roll, rap (eventually), inside stories, and big hair. Also discussed are a video so bad it destroyed a successful rock star’s career, why MTV stopped playing videos, and the phenomenon that was Tawny Kitaen. The book is laugh-out-loud funny and entertaining.

Those of a more serious bent will want to investigate David Grann’s latest, The Wager. The subtitle describes the book as “A tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder”; it is a tale of Pestilence, Cannibalism, Superstition, Dumb Luck, and Grub Street. The Wager was a man-of-war that foundered attempting to round Cape Horn in 1740. The aforementioned shipwreck, mutiny, and murder ensue as part of a harrowing tale of how a handful of crew members and officers survived such catastrophes and made it back to England – just not at the same time nor with the same account of what happened.

Grann offers insight into the everyday challenges of seafaring in the 1740s. It wasn’t for the faint of heart.

Lastly, as a big fan of the Expanse book and TV series, I was excited to discover that the two gentlemen who created that world under the combined nom de plume of James S.A. Corey have launched another sci-fi book series. The Captive’s War series begins with The Mercy of Gods, in which an elite team of Earth scientists can forestall the destruction of the planet by their new alien overlords if they can demonstrate their “usefulness” as humanity’s representatives. The team soon begins to wonder whether the definition of “usefulness” extends beyond completing the task they’ve been assigned. As with the Expanse, the novel contains interesting, flawed characters and ambitious world-building. That world includes far-fetched elements (including sentient parasites that are infecting – and killing – members of the scientific team), but somehow it holds together interestingly.

I can’t wait for the next instalment.