Bookscape Report
Which books are shaping the broader conversation this month, as mentioned across leading podcasts.
Biggest mover: CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders from the Rest by Carolyn Dewar, Scott Keller, Vikram Malhotra #2, rising 277 places.
Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons & Dragons by Ben Riggs was the top newcomer at #6. In total 49 books had their debut mentions.
My First Million drove the most book chatter, with 10% of this months book mentions.
December’s list tilts strongly toward executive leadership under pressure, with a cluster of CEO-focused titles and classic management texts resurfacing together. Across the set, three themes stand out: how top leaders navigate disruptive change, the enduring importance of operating discipline, and the role of personal habits in sustaining performance. The prominence of CEO Excellence and A CEO for All Seasons, alongside High Output Management and The Hard Thing About Hard Things, suggests listeners are looking for concrete playbooks for leading through volatile conditions rather than generic inspiration. The Innovator’s Dilemma’s sharp rise to the top highlights renewed concern about incumbents being blindsided by new technology, likely reflecting ongoing AI and platform shifts. Complementing this, Atomic Habits, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and Creativity, Inc. indicate continued interest in the micro-foundations of leadership: individual effectiveness, creativity, and culture as levers for long-term resilience.
The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail
Clayton M. Christensen
4
mentions
CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders from the Rest
Carolyn Dewar, Scott Keller, Vikram Malhotra
3
mentions
A CEO for All Seasons: Mastering the Cycles of Leadership
Carolyn Dewar, Scott Keller, Vikram Malhotra, Kurt Strovink
3
mentions
Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones
James Clear
2
mentions
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Stephen R. Covey, Jim Collins, Sean Covey
2
mentions
Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons & Dragons
Ben Riggs
2
mentions
Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration
Ed Catmull, Amy Wallace
2
mentions
Elon Musk
Walter Isaacson
2
mentions
The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers-Straight Talk on the Challenges of Entrepreneurship
Ben Horowitz
2
mentions
High Output Management
Andrew S. Grove
2
mentions
The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail to #1.
Significant outlier with 3.5x as many mentions as the average book.
Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons & Dragons to #6.
Highest ranking new entry to the chart.
CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders from the Rest to #2.
Up 277 places from #279 last month.
The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine to #170.
Down from #1 last month
The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine to #170.
No mentions after ranking #1 last month.
No mentions after ranking #2 last month.
The shows that surfaced the most book mentions this month.
Mentions recorded per 30-day window (past 8 months)
How many of the mentions were for the top 10 books.
The entrepreneurship podcasts included in this report are curated by MavenSignal to represent the voices founders and operators trust most for playbooks, launches, and long-term strategy.
We ingest public RSS feeds, analyze each episode, extract book mentions with AI, and validate with humans. The resulting data is normalized and deduplicated, building the canonical signal for the MavenSignal platform. Every insight and ranking is drawn from that verified layer.
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