I’d argue the chatterati class fragmented into multiple discourse currents around 2007. Kinda like cable explosion in 80s.
For eg: Piketty = HBO
Sapiens = MTV
etc.
I count a dozen “channel scale” books.
I’m waiting for the Comedy Central/Cartoon Network book tbh.
Let’s inventory the channel scale books then.
Jobs bio
Sapiens
Sovereign Individual
Zero to One
Blitzscaling
Lean In
Lean Startup
Factfulness
Some musk book
not certain. Generative.
These seem tech specific. Maybe tech is the ESPN bundle.
I’d say the generic ones are:
Piketty
Sapiens
Sovereign Individual
Hillbilly Elegy
Vaclav Smil
Debt
Maybe Moses Naim
Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow
Each started a specific conversation
Book on tech/management almost never level up up to this level of discourse. Possibly the only one I can recall in my life is Lee Iacocca’s biography being weirdly broadly popular in the 80s.
General zeitgeist discourse has no clue books like zero to one even exist.