The Feature Book Picks 2025

As we close out another transformative year in technology, these three books published in 2025 offer essential perspectives on where we’ve been and where we’re headed. From the future of artificial intelligence to the untold history of the web’s founding principles and the emerging innovation landscape of the Middle East and North Africa, this year’s selections capture the pivotal conversations shaping our digital world.

1. Coming of Age: How Technology and Entrepreneurship are Changing the Face of MENA 

By Noor Sweid

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has long been underrepresented in global tech narratives, typically appearing only in discussions of oil resources or geopolitical instability. Coming of Age captures the growth of MENA’s tech ecosystem and the generation of entrepreneurs building it. The book traces how a young, connected, and ambitious population is leveraging technology to solve local challenges while competing on the global stage, as told through the deals, the founders, and the cultural shifts that made it possible.

For those tracking the globalization of tech capital or seeking to understand emerging markets beyond the usual Silicon Valley lens, the book offers contextual and forward-looking insights into MENA’s venture and entrepreneurship landscape. More than a regional business story, this is a book about how technology is reshaping identity, opportunity, and power in one of the world’s most dynamic and misunderstood regions.

2. Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future 

By Reid Hoffman, Greg Beato

Amid growing concerns about the adoption of artificial intelligence and its social and economic implications, this book offers a refreshingly optimistic yet grounded exploration of AI’s potential. The authors challenge prevailing existential anxieties by asking a provocative question: what if we actually get AI right? 

Through a blend of technical insight and philosophical reflection, it examines how human agency can be amplified rather than diminished by intelligent systems, arguing that the future of AI depends less on the technology itself and more on the choices we make in developing and deploying it. For readers exhausted by apocalyptic AI predictions but unwilling to embrace naive techno-optimism, this book charts a thoughtful middle path.

3. This Is for Everyone: The Unfinished Story of the World Wide Web 

By Sir Tim Berners-Lee

More than three decades after Tim Berners-Lee’s world-changing invention, this book returns to the founding vision of the World Wide Web to examine how the web has changed since its founding and what lessons can be drawn today. The title references Berners-Lee’s famous declaration during the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony, and the book excavates the democratic, universal ideals that animated the web’s creation. 

Drawing on personal history, archival material, and contemporary reflections, Berners-Lee traces the web’s evolution from open protocol to platform monopolies, exploring the tensions between its decentralized architecture and the centralized power structures that now dominate it. The book is an urgent inquiry into whether the web’s original promise can still be redeemed in an era of digital enclosure. Essential reading for anyone who believes the internet’s story isn’t finished yet.