Wealth Management has released its list of the best business books of 2025 for financial advisors, highlighting works that it claims challenge conventional thinking and offer sharper perspectives on markets, risk, fraud, and decision-making. The selections span history, policy, behavioral finance, and even fiction, all with a common goal: helping advisors rethink how money, power, and judgment shape financial outcomes.
Several titles revisit the darkest moments in U.S. financial history. 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History—and How It Shattered a Nation by Andrew Ross Sorkin traces the events leading to the market collapse and captures how the Great Depression took hold across the country. Wealth Management notes that readers can open the book at almost any point and uncover vivid character portraits and overlooked details. In The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy, Ray Madoff argues that the federal tax system has evolved to benefit the ultra-wealthy, effectively making income taxes optional for a privileged few.
Fraud detection and investment discipline also feature prominently on the must-read list. Catching Cheats: Everyday Forensics to Unmask Business Fraud by Erik Lie draws lessons from notorious cases such as Bernie Madoff, Enron, and Martha Stewart, giving advisors practical insight into identifying red flags. The New Rules of Investing by Mark H. Haefele challenges traditional stock picking and value investing, offering both the case for change and tools for navigating turbulent markets.
Behavioral judgment and ethics anchor Choose Wisely by Barry Schwartz and Richard Schuldenfrei, which questions whether pure utility maximization should even serve as the ultimate objective. On a global scale, Kenneth Rogoff's Our Dollar, Your Problem examines decades of international finance and warns advisors to consider the growing risks to dollar stability, including debt, governance challenges, and currency competition.
Structural flaws in personal finance take center stage in Fixed by John Y. Campbell and Tarun Ramadorai. The authors argue that the system often benefits providers and sophisticated investors at the expense of ordinary consumers and call for substantive regulatory reforms and product redesigns. Wealth Management also highlights Women and Wealth, a practical playbook aimed at helping advisors better serve women as they prepare to inherit a significant share of intergenerational wealth.
The list rounds out with two titles that focus on purpose and resilience. In The Art of Spending Money, Morgan Housel reframes spending as a tool for independence, health, and time, rather than wealth accumulation for its own sake. Finally, Pitfall, a novel by Terry Kirk, explores whether professional skills and personal values can endure even after total financial loss.
Financial Advisor Transitions consults advisors nationwide to explore employment transition options and to preserve and protect their practice in any transition that they make.
