Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
791–800 of 1001 posts
Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
#792Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. I read it first year of university and at the time I was very influenced by it.
Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
#793Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers
Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
#794Babel 17 - different language enables us to think, looked into ithkuil for a few weeks, helped a lot with analytical thinking.
Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
#795* Factfulness and Thinking Fast And Slow. The latter helped me internalise that my thinking, like most humans, is biased. Even being aware of those biases doesn’t always help. We need to go above and beyond to overcome our biases. Factfulness goes into detail about what those biases are and how they lead to a distorted world view. Rather than taking the easy way out by blaming journalists/politicians/rich people, he…
India After Gandhi is truly a powerful book, and you're right in saying that it is our duty as an Indian to educate ourselves about post-1947 happenings. My only issue with the book, though only slightly, was the fast that Guha was a bit too soft on Nehru. There were many flaws/bad decisions (and good decisions too indeed) taken by Nehru which, I think, the book downplayed.
Nevertheless, Guha is truly an amazing historian and all of his books deserve to be read!
Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
#796Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
#797Maybe trite, but the Bible. For a mind-blowing experience, read Matthew chapters 5–7, and have in mind that the topic is: “what it means for a person to be righteous, or good.” The analysis of the role of moral rules, the place of worry and anxiety in driving us to short-sighted compromise, the tension between “secret” good-doing versus good-doing for public recognition, are all potent, helpful, and life-changing.
As comments have noted for other non-English books, you really lose a lot in the translation to English.
Grab a Hebrew/Greek Interlinear bible and there are plenty of lexicons available online to see how words were used by contemporary writers.
Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
#798Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius. Bottom line: judge your success in life by how well you make your decisions, not by your outcome. You have full control of your decisions, and often no control at all over their results.
I found William Irving's A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy a very legible contemporary (if somewhat idiosyncratic) introduction to Stoic thought, and maybe more accessible/applicable than the classic sources.
I'd like to read it. Of course, there's the Enchiridion:
http://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/epicench.html
Which is quite short.
Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
#799Everything from Yuval Noah Harari
Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
#800Culture and Empire by Pieter Hintjens (he also created ZeroMQ, among other things and titles).
That book offers excellent insight into the stupidity of crowds and how that plays into geopolitics, and more.