Trying to make sense of AI beyond the headlines? McKinsey’s 2026 book recommendations have got you covered. This year’s list digs into AI from every angle, with ten picks from leaders across business, media, academia, and McKinsey—covering everything from the race for superintelligence to the ethics of algorithms to what it’s actually like to live and work alongside AI today. Whether you’re after the technology, the human impact, or the story behind the people building it, there’s a read here for you. Here are some highlights.
AI for Good: How Real People Are Using Artificial Intelligence to Fix Things That Matter by Josh Tyrangiel
Recommended by Nicholas Thompson, CEO, The Atlantic; author, The Running Ground: A Father, a Son, and the Simplest of Sports
“Tyrangiel is one of the smartest writers in the world on AI, and in this book, he looks at how the technology—not the companies that make it—is going to change the world.”
A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains by Max Bennett
Recommended by Daron Acemoglu, institute professor of economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Nobel laureate, Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences
“This book provides a highly readable synthesis of a range of biological hypotheses about why animal intelligence has emerged and uses that to shed light on how to think about AI. We need to understand how human intelligence differs from artificial intelligence to best work out how to combine AI with human capabilities.”
Human Raised: Nurturing Connection, Curiosity & Lifelong Learning in the Age of AI by Dana Suskind
Recommended by Adam Grant, Saul P. Steinberg Professor of Management, and professor of psychology, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; podcast host, The Curiosity Shop and Re: Thinking
“I loved this book. It’s a beautiful book about how to preserve our capacities for connection, curiosity, and critical thinking in the age of AI.”
Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race That Will Change the World by Parmy Olson
Recommended by Amy Webb, CEO, FTSG
“Olson went behind the closed doors of OpenAI, DeepMind, and Anthropic. The race to artificial general intelligence has protagonists who are brilliant, conflicted, and making irreversible decisions on behalf of all of us.”