Fifteen books in three arcs, machines that think, money that moves, power that shifts, with authors, years and who should read each one first.
The decade is being written in three registers at once. Machines started doing things we used to call thinking. Money began migrating onto new rails while the old ones were turned into weapons. And power quietly reorganized itself around physical chokepoints: fabs, straits, grids, minerals. Most books cover one register and wave at the others. The fifteen below, five per arc, are the ones that actually explain their piece, chosen so that together they form one picture.
I have skin in this game: I wrote a trilogy on exactly these three questions, so I read the competition professionally, and this list is opinionated by design. It mixes recognized landmarks with a few picks you will not find on every airport table. Every author, year and publisher below was checked against publisher pages and primary sources at publication; nothing here is quoted from memory.