Almost all books by Harry Browne. Specifically "How I found freedom in an unfree world".
Could you recommend something non investment related from him? How I found freedom is one of the books I re-read every year.
Ask HN: What books have made the biggest impact on your mental models?
231–240 of 254 posts
Re: Ask HN: What books have made the biggest impact on your mental models?
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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.
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Re: Ask HN: What books have made the biggest impact on your mental models?
#233I'm in the middle of the biography of Robert Moses, "The Power Broker" by Robert Caro and just finished re-reading "A Portrait of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde. As a fairly successful yuppie that came from Not A Whole Lot, it's really knocked me down a few pegs and made me realize that being a pompous ass about my exercised social mobility isn't all that special.
> "A Portrait of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde Don't you mean "The Picture of Dorian Gray"? (Google it, it's Picture but everyone says Portrait for some reason)
Whoops I did mean that!
Re: Ask HN: What books have made the biggest impact on your mental models?
#234Reading a book by a human mind works pretty much like training a neural network. You get tuned and change in a way that you might not see even if you don't remember.
Re: Ask HN: What books have made the biggest impact on your mental models?
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's the gist of the premise? 370 pages for a list of six items seems a bit inflated (forgive my judgment but am a slow reader and love efficiency)
All I can say is... I stopped reading self-help books 10 years ago because they all bored me to tears. I HATE fluff. I hate repeated ideas and concepts, I hate long intros... I usually will stop reading books 30% in because it's like "I get it". This book, however, is written by a guy who basically died at 87 and studied self-esteem since he was very young. So basically he's studied the same topic for 60 years, and h…
Thank you. I'll definitely check it out.
Re: Ask HN: What books have made the biggest impact on your mental models?
#236Here's some: with why I like them
Thinking, problem solving related:
Superforecasting by Philip Tetlock: accurate forecasting
Thinking fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman: how to avoid bias
Misbehaving: like thinking fast and slow but more hilarious
The checklist manifesto by Atul Gawande: the power of simple process
From Darwin to Munger by Peter Bevelin: lots of mental models to add to your latticework
Business management:
The Outsiders by William Thorndike: capital allocation
The hard thing about hard things by Ben Horowitz: some mental models for managers facing the real-life struggles of startups
Zero to One by Peter Thiel and Blake masters: for the chapter on what kinds of business are always going to be tough (i.e. ones in perfectly competitive industries)
Worldview:
The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why violence has declined
The making of modern economics by Mark Skousen (audiobook): explains various economic ideas through telling the history of the fathers of those ideas.
Investing:
You can be a stock market genius by Joel Greenblatt: where to look for undervaluation
The Essays of Warren Buffett by Lawrence Cunningham: Buffett's thoughts in Buffett's words, neatly categorised by topic
Competition Demystified by Bruce Greenwald: how to identify a high quality business
Re: Ask HN: What books have made the biggest impact on your mental models?
#237Sapiens
Desert Solitaire
Meditations
Walden
Meditations
Thinking Fast and Slow
Re: Ask HN: What books have made the biggest impact on your mental models?
#238Fantastic 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…
Is the Carnegie one his autobiography?
Re: Ask HN: What books have made the biggest impact on your mental models?
#239• The Prize • The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich • The Lean Startup • Poke the Box • The Elements of Computing Systems • The Death of Common Sense • Up the Organization • The Personal MBA • The Wisdom of No-Escape • The Adapted Mind • Brain Rules • Getting Things Done • On Writing • Steal Like An Artist • George Orwell: A Collection of Essays And these are technically not books, but Glenn Greenwald's "Speech to the…
Loved Brain rules, and Brain Rules for baby is also wonderful :)
Re: Ask HN: What books have made the biggest impact on your mental models?
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
By the way,Guns, Germs, and Steel, while an interesting book, and brings an interesting perspective, is largely discredited from what I've read.
yeah, i was trying to allude to that. I found the way of looking at things compelling, regardless.
One of the key things that the book does is say, "Hey, you're probably looking at history with fundamental attribution bias goggles on. Take those off." The civilizational features that go into its namesake may not be sufficient or necessary features of wealthy civilizations, but they are important things to consider.