My recommendation: A Brief History of Progress by Ronald Wright.
My Wife's recommendation: Your Money or Your Life.
Ask HN: What book should I buy for my 18th birthday?
21–30 of 70 posts
Re: Ask HN: What book should I buy for my 18th birthday?
#22Re: Ask HN: What book should I buy for my 18th birthday?
#23The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins is great.
Or something by Jared Diamond, e.g. The Third Chimpanzee.
Re: Ask HN: What book should I buy for my 18th birthday?
#24Man’s search for meaning - Viktor Frankl It will change your life, dare I say.
I second this. Buy several copies and give them to your friends and strangers on the bus that see you reading it ;)
Re: Ask HN: What book should I buy for my 18th birthday?
#25Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is always worth having a look at.
Not everyone's cup of tea, but I greatly enjoyed it at around that age.
Ed Thorp's autobiography "A man for all markets" is fun, in particular if you're interested in maths, gambling or finance.
Re: Ask HN: What book should I buy for my 18th birthday?
#26Not a book recommendation, but Star Trek TNG has had a huge influence on my life and was (and still is) one of my biggest inspirations to get into engineering. It’s also filled with philosophy as well as things like leadership advice, etc.
Maybe one day I’ll get round to compiling a TNG greatest hits, like Measure of a Man, The Inner Light (the entire episodes pretty much), as well as scenes like Data demonstrating “calling in” rather than “calling out” bad behavior (https://youtu.be/vMKtKNZw4Bo), and just general Philosopher King speeches from Picard (https://youtu.be/Jph2qWXJ-Tk)
Re: Ask HN: What book should I buy for my 18th birthday?
#27The answer I really want to give, but which isn't very helpful, is: go to a bookstore or to Amazon, find something that looks interesting to you, and buy it.
Don't worry about buying the right book at the right time, or if you'll like it in 50 years, or whatever. You'll have plenty of chances to get this right in the future.
The possibly more helpful, but self-promoting answer: I did a post twelve years ago on my personal blog about ten (plus five) books that were major influences on me. Many of those (11 out of the 15) are non-fiction, and you might get an idea or two from that list.
Re: Ask HN: What book should I buy for my 18th birthday?
#28"I could give you no advice but this: to go into yourself and to explore the depths where your life wells forth" -Rilke
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rainer_Maria_Rilke#Letters_to_...
Re: Ask HN: What book should I buy for my 18th birthday?
#29When I was 18, I read Gödel Escher Bach, an Eternal Golden Braid on Minds and Machines in the Spirit of Lewis Carol, by Douglas R Hofstader. It's a book that won a pullitzer prize in the 1970s and is about maths and formal logic, but really gives you a flavour of how consciousness might come about.
Another vote for G.E.B.
I've come to realise that it's a bit long winded and winding, but it's pretty nice to go deep into. Like, just read it straight through.
Re: Ask HN: What book should I buy for my 18th birthday?
#30Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World - Tim Marshall