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Ask HN: What books have made the biggest impact on your mental models?

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Re: Ask HN: What books have made the biggest impact on your mental models?

#101

Post by kornish »

phaus wrote: post #99
austenallred wrote: post #16

Fantastic question. The selfish gene - for understanding human behavior Meditations of Marcus Aurelius - for understanding how to be content Debt, the first 5,000 years - for understanding money and finance from the ground up Wright Brothers - for understanding how technological breakthroughs happen Snowball (Warren Buffet), Andrew Carnegie and Rockefeller biographies - for understanding the mental mindset to win in…

For Andrew Carnegie and Rockefeller, which biographies do you recommend?

Not the OP, but Ron Chernow's Titan is a phenomenal chronicle of Rockefeller.

Re: Ask HN: What books have made the biggest impact on your mental models?

#102

Post by thefuzz »

mashmac2 wrote: post #78
yodsanklai wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Debt, the first 5,000 years It's often cited on HN, but I've found it very dense and difficult to read.

I've had the audiobook version recommended for this exact reason - easier to listen to than to read :)

I've heard exactly this about the book, audio book > text

Re: Ask HN: What books have made the biggest impact on your mental models?

#104

Post by lolive »

yodsanklai wrote: post #65

1984. A very powerful book. It really made a strong impression on me and definitely changed my views on politics, propaganda, governments and so on. Capitalism and freedom. Helped me to understand capitalism and American right-wing ideology. The grapes of wrath. Actually, I haven't read the book, only watched the movie. It puts into perspective what we see happening with refugees in Europe.

The book is a must-read. Did you read Propaganda (by Edward Bernays) after that?

Re: Ask HN: What books have made the biggest impact on your mental models?

#105

Post by lolive »

etplayer wrote: post #86
brudgers wrote: post #47

Critique of Pure Reason Philosophical Investigations The Moon is a Harsh Mistress Foucault's Pendulum Snopes == The Hamlet , The Town , The Mansion . A River Runs Through It Programming Erlang: Software for a Concurrent World A Pattern Language The Analects Bhagavad Gita Apology The Republic Touch the Earth The Pity of War: Explaining World War I The Civil War: A Narrative

>Foucault's Pendulum What's this about? >Critique of Pure Reason What did you find particular challenging to your worldview? As a side note, you may be interested in Critique of Pure Tolerance which has an essay by Robert Wolff and Marcuse. Have you seen The Dialectic of Enlightenment ?

Foucault's pendulum is Dan Brown power 1 billion. A super story about the secrets of history. I never managed to read it (it IS dense). But as a audiobook, it was superb.

Re: Ask HN: What books have made the biggest impact on your mental models?

#109

Post by observation »

One book more than any other: The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe.

Why?

Darwin opens up the door of Deep Time when he explained his discovery. An appreciation of the immensity of time happens to be linked to explanations of how and why things are. Wolfe also deals with Deep Time but in the context of society.

What Gene Wolfe does is he creates books where you need to read between the lines, you need to create hypotheses to understand what's going on. I won't describe it further because it may lose some of the import, it's probably the most important fiction book written in the 20th century.

What I'd like is a photograph of Peter Thiel's library, I'm fascinated by the range of ideas, the meta-ideas he explores. Maybe @sama can smuggle in a camera or we could hijack a roomba.

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