Amazon this week announced the Best Books of the Year So Far, as chosen by the retailer’s books editorial team.
The roundup highlights the editorial team’s top 20 titles of the year so far—those published between January and June 2021—as well as top reads in literary fiction, mystery and thrillers, biography, children’s books, young adult titles, and more.
Many of the books chosen are also customer favorites and bestsellers, but sometimes the list includes titles that haven’t received much attention. Similar to recent popular lists on Goodreads (also owned by Amazon), this year’s results continue to demonstrate readers are gravitating toward more diverse sources.
“I see a real interest in FAANG-style companies—those books are everywhere—and also there’s a keener interest in equity and fairness with books like The Whiteness of Wealth and even Ron Lieber’s The Price You Pay for College,” says Amazon books editor Chris Schluep. “Looking forward, I am excited to read My Life in Full by the former Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi. That’s coming in the fall, and as the first immigrant and woman of color to run a big company like Pepsi, this is an important book that a lot of people are anticipating. Also, Ray Dalio has a new one publishing in November, The Changing World Order. That’s going to fuel a lot of conversations.”
As far as business is concerned, one might assume that career guides and other books about handling change might be popular at the moment given how many employees are making major career changes as the pandemic wanes in the United States. But that doesn’t appear to be the case yet, suggesting there could be a gap in what readers are looking for in this area.
“I was expecting to see more books about people making job and life changes after the pandemic,” Schluep tells Fortune. “Other than Katy Milkman’s How to Change, which is great, that hasn’t played out—yet.”
Here are the top 20 books in business and leadership, published in the months since the beginning of 2021:
- Work: A Deep History, From the Stone Age to the Age of Robots by James Suzman
- Change Your World: How Anyone, Anywhere Can Make a Difference by John C. Maxwell and Rob Hoskins
- Run to Win: Lessons in Leadership for Women Changing the World by Stephanie Schriock with Christina Reynolds; foreword by U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris
- Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World by Simon Winchester
- Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone by Sarah Jaffe
- Keep Sharp: Build a Better Brain at Any Age by Sanjay Gupta
- Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It by Ethan Kross
- The Price You Pay for College: An Entirely New Road Map for the Biggest Financial Decision Your Family Will Ever Make by Rob Lieber
- Come Fly the World: The Jet-Age Story of the Women of Pan Am by Julia Cooke
- Dirty Gold: The Rise and Fall of an International Smuggling Ring by Jay Weaver, Nicholas Nehamas, Jim Wyss, and Kyra Gurney
- Huddle: How Women Unlock Their Collective Power by Brooke Baldwin
- What We Owe Each Other: A New Social Contract for a Better Society by Minouche Shafik
- Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know by Adam Grant
- Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein
- Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe
- How to Change: The Science of Getting From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be by Katy Milkman
- How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need by Bill Gates
- Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX by Eric Berger
- The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans—and How We Can Fix It by Dorothy A. Brown
- A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload by Cal Newport
