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Duncan Mapes and Jason Ehmke

Building in the Enterprise

December 9, 2025

Top Book Recommendations for Tech Professionals and Engineering Managers

Every great leader has a few books that quietly shaped how they lead. For Duncan and Jason, those books go far beyond tech manuals. They’re the ones that teach you how to think, how to communicate, and how to take responsibility when things get hard. In this week’s Tech Council, they open their personal libraries and share the titles that stuck. Expect reflections on ownership, transparency, and the hidden leadership lessons inside biographies, history books, and even fiction. This isn’t your ordinary book recommendations episode. It’s about why some ideas endure, why others fail in practice, and why the best tech lessons sometimes come from outside of tech entirely.