Last year we made a similar list, and we received messages at Christmas from people who'd read the books under the umbrella and still had them in mind in December. It's the sign the list was right.
This year we update. Five books. In reading order — because the first prepares for the second, the second leaves space for the third, and so on. They're not LinkedIn bestsellers. They're not the usual American manuals translated with the brake on. They are books that, we think, will change something in your head when you come back.
Four out of five are Italian or set in Italy. One is foreign but makes peace with the context.
1. Fresh Water for Flowers — Valérie Perrin (Edizioni e/o)
French novel from 2018 that in Italy had a slow but constant life (over 700,000 copies sold, an editorial life lasting now seven years). Nothing to do with your craft. It's the story of a woman who works as the keeper of a cemetery in a provincial town.
Why read it. It's a book about hidden identities. About the ways people build acceptable surfaces for the world, and how rarely we see what's underneath. For those who do branding — and for those who do marketing tout court — it's a school of observation on how we see customers, and on how little we really see them.
Read it slowly. A week. It's not a business book, but it will change how you write about your customers in September.
2. Scrivere civile. Pubblicità e brand al servizio della società (Civil Writing: Advertising and Brands in Service of Society) — Paolo Iabichino
Iabichino is one of the most respected Italian copywriters of the last three decades: he's the one who coined the term Invertising years ago, and is one of the most lucid voices of our sector. In Scrivere civile he argues a thesis that would make an average boardroom wince: advertising shouldn't be "ethical" as in compliance, it should be civil as a strategic choice.
Why read it. For two reasons. One: it puts you at peace with your craft if you got tired of "performance marketing at all costs". Two: it gives you concrete arguments to write claims your customer will feel as theirs, not as the latest interchangeable campaign.
Light reading. You finish it in two-three evenings. The ideas stay for months.
3. Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI — Ethan Mollick
Only foreigner on the list, but one you can't skip. Mollick is a Wharton professor (USA) who for two years has written the clearest and most honest blog on AI applied to business (One Useful Thing). His 2024 book gathers and systematizes that thinking.
Why read it. All the other AI-for-business books out there are either evangelists ("it will revolutionize everything!") or apocalyptic ("it will steal our jobs!"). Mollick is laically operational: what works, what doesn't, how to measure, how to integrate. Suitable for an SME decision-maker who wants to understand it without becoming its hostage.
Read in three days. If you do it before the 5 AI experiments piece, all the better.
4. Il sogno di Solomeo. La mia vita e l'idea del capitalismo umanistico (The Dream of Solomeo: My Life and the Idea of Humanistic Capitalism) — Brunello Cucinelli (Feltrinelli)
Premise: it's partly an autobiography, partly a manifesto. Curated by Massimo de Vico Fallani, it tells the story of Cucinelli and the idea that shaped Solomeo as an industrial and civil project.
Why read it. Because — as we wrote Thursday in the piece on Cucinelli and marketplaces — the most-studied Italian case of "brand as place" is here, in front of us, in Umbria. The book is the founder's first-person perspective, to be taken with the caution an autobiography deserves: but it's a reading that for those who do Italian SME branding does more good than ten foreign manuals.
Demanding but linear reading. Four or five summer evenings.
5. Etica dell'intelligenza artificiale. Sviluppi, opportunità, sfide (AI Ethics: Developments, Opportunities, Challenges) — Luciano Floridi (Raffaello Cortina)
Floridi is one of the few Italians sitting at the international table of philosophy of information (chair at Oxford, today at Yale, works with governments and EU institutions). The book is from 2022 but remains the most solid reference for those who want to understand the ethical and regulatory implications of AI without reading twenty papers.
Why read it. Because we have an AI Act in full implementation, and understanding the philosophical frame that led to that regulation makes you — literally — a better decision-maker. For CTOs, CFOs, and CEOs of companies integrating AI, it's what fills the gap between "the vendor's quote" and "the lawyer's quote".
Not an easy beach read. But if you're on a couch with air conditioning, two chapters a day will change your perspective by the end of August.
A methodological note (to close)
Five books in five weeks are readable in August. They're eight-ten hours of reading per book. They replace three Netflix evenings nicely.
Don't expect them to give you "operational solutions". Books don't work that way. They work slowly, and they re-emerge — in your head — in choices you'll make differently in the months after. Often, at Christmas, you'll realize you made a choice in May you wouldn't have made, and you'll understand the seed was planted by one of these books.
That's exactly the reason you don't read them the rest of the year. They seem "non-urgent". They are — and precisely for that, they're important.
Thursday, July 23 we return to the AI pillar with a piece that's been burning for months: Vibe coding in production: wonders, disasters, house rules. Six months of code written largely by AI agents on Tuken, BP, Blogger. What works, what's forbidden, what's still a minefield.
Have time for a book but not for thinking about your communication? When you come back, let's talk. Branding services for those returning with fresh ideas to put to ground. Write to us.