Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?

Granted, long-term that thinking kills companies, but short term it keeps the bills paid, the kids fed, and the beer cold.

The intersection of billions of years of history, a scale where ice ages come and go like thunder storms, where mountains go up and down in quick succession, with the human timescale of scientific progress, really altered my perspective on a lot of things. We didn't have plate tectonics until the 1970's. My grandfather went to high school and college learning the classical theories of orogenies, and just two generations later, a blink of an eye relative to the movements of our Earth, human understanding of what shapes our world is massively advanced.

It's made me think about every human endeavor differently. Everything we do and are is so ephemeral.

>“The applause went on—six, seven, eight minutes! They were done for! Their goose was cooked! They couldn’t stop now till they collapsed with heart attacks! At the rear of the hall, which was crowded, they could of course cheat a bit, clap less frequently, less vigorously, not so eagerly…Nine minutes! Ten!…Insanity! To the last man! With make-believe enthusiasm on their faces, looking at each other with faint hope, the district leaders were just going to go on and on applauding till they fell where they stood, till they were carried out of the hall on stretchers.” > >At last, after eleven minutes of non-stop clapping, the director of a paper factory finally decided enough was enough. He stopped clapping and sat down—a miracle! “To a man, everyone else stopped dead and sat down,” Solzhenitsyn says. > >That same night, the director of the paper factory was arrested and sent to prison for ten years. Authorities came up with some official reason for his sentence, but during his interrogation, he was told: “Don’t ever be the first to stop applauding!”

>“Martin Latsis, writing for the newspaper Red Terror, November 1, 1918: “We are not fighting against single individuals. We are exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class. It is not necessary during the interrogation to look for evidence proving that the accused opposed the Soviets by word or action. The first question you should ask him is what class does he belong to, what is his origin, his education and his profession. These are the questions that will determine the fate of the accused. Such is the sense and essence of red terror.”

You might also check out this [list of books banned in the USSR](https://theculturetrip.com/europe/russia/articles/10-books-t...), which includes the above and Animal Farm.

Currently in the middle of thinking fast and slow, and I think it may be happening again :p