Ask HN: What are the most thought-provoking books that you have read?

I can't choose one, but I'd cite:

* Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind, for explaining so much personally and culturally so concisely.

* Everything on this list: http://jakeseliger.com/2010/03/22/influential-books-on-me-th....

* The Lord of the Rings, for its combination of story, interior drama, and (underrated) political economy.

* Blindsight by Peter Watts.

* Heart of Darkness by Conrad, who seems more prophetic all the time.

These two books are must reads for sure (Or must listens, both are well narrated in audio book form)

* The One Thing By Gary Keller and Jay Papasan

* Soft Skills By John Sonmez

Nine Hundred Grandmothers, by R.A. Lafferty (out of print except for "The Books of Sand")

Last and First Men, by Olaf Stapledon, free at http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2028/last-and-first-men

Accelerando, by Charles Stross, free at http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelera...

The Doubter's Companion, by John Ralston Saul, http://www.amazon.com/The-Doubters-Companion-Dictionary-Aggr...

David Simon's "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets"

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18956.Homicide

I wish it were required reading in at least all journalism school curriculums. It's a book about death and the most "exciting" part of police work but also one that reveals the banality and politically-motivated mechanics of such a system. I almost hesitate to call it "thought-provoking" because it, among other things, is just a great page-turner, though astonishingly completely non-fiction. I say "astonishingly" because Simon, according to him and the detectives he wrote about, had pretty much free reign to write what he wanted...there's no way such a book could be written today, as the police tactics that Simon describe, out of context, would likely cause a lot of outrage today.

As a bonus, reading "Homicide" will make all of the jargon in "The Wire" much more understandable. Many of the memorable incidents in "The Wire", including the very first scene, and scenes like the photocopier-used-as-lie-detector, come straight from "Homicide"

Two books come to mind almost immedatley one fiction, the other non-fiction.

The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges, this really shook my belief in the meaning of ordered data.

Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter, I read this right after I finished high-school, and it turned a math-hating young man into a math obsessed man.