Some recent engaging reads:
* Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational
* Christopher McDougall, Born to Run
* Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers
* Jeb Brugman, Welcome to the Urban Revolution
* Richard Florida, Who's Your City?
Ask HN: Interesting (Non software) books?
21–30 of 184 posts
Re: Ask HN: Interesting (Non software) books?
#22You will not be wasting your time poking around the great stuff in http://classics.mit.edu/Browse/index.html
One of my favorites is Caesar's The Gallic Wars, because it's so amazing that we have his very own account: http://classics.mit.edu/Caesar/gallic.html
Josephus' account of The Jewish Wars is amazing.
Marcus Aurelius' Meditations is a must-read: http://classics.mit.edu/Antoninus/meditations.html
Re: Ask HN: Interesting (Non software) books?
#23Don't miss sivers's great list: http://sivers.org/book As for mine, Science Fiction (I like these authors so I'd recommend most of their books -- listing which ones I think are a good 'starter novel' for them): Charles Stross: Halting State Vernor Vinge: A Fire Upon The Deep Iain M. Banks: Culture novels, start with Player of Games David Louis Edelman: Jump 225 Trilogy Daniel Suarez: Daemon and Freedom(tm) John Scalz…
Good stuff in the SciFi section there! The culture novels in particular are great! My favorite Culture novel so far is 'Use of Weapons'...
Re: Ask HN: Interesting (Non software) books?
#24 * Daniel Quinn - Beyond Civilization (an easy read about what's wrong with today's society, why, and how to fix it. Not political, rather what you can do yourself. It was a real eye-opener to me)
* Jared Diamond - Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (Jared Diamond is a geographer who writes about societies and civilizations, and how they tackle changing conditions)
* Herfried Münkler - Empires: The Logic of World Domination from Ancient Rome to the United States (Münkler writes about different historical and contemporary empires and hegemonies, why they did what they did, and why they failed early or managed to stay for centuries. Very non-political and matter-of-factly)
* Ursula K. LeGuin - The Word for World is Forest, The Earthsea Saga (Science Fiction/Fantasy, LeGuin is pretty different from most sci-fi-writers. Earthsea is pretty standard magicians/dragons-fantasy, though)
* Ryszard Kapuściński - Travels with Herodotus (Kapuściński was a Polish journalist who traveled a lot. Here, he tries to walk in Herodotus' foot-steps. Basically, a modern day Herodotus)
* Jules Verne - All of his books are worth reading. Visionary and engaging.
Re: Ask HN: Interesting (Non software) books?
#25The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steven Gary Blank is an excellent book about startup engineering.
Re: Ask HN: Interesting (Non software) books?
#26Flatland (http://amzn.com/1607961024)
Re: Ask HN: Interesting (Non software) books?
#27I just finished and enjoyed: The Four Pillars of Investing by William Bernstein The four pillars consisting of investment theory, history, psychology and business. I ascribe to the indexing model of investing and this book helped crystallize my view point as well as provide an interesting overview of investment history. Plus I'll throw in one of my favorite, bloody gems of a book: Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
The Road was also another excellent book by Cormac McCarthy. I'm not sure about his other books but this one was a really easy read.
Re: Ask HN: Interesting (Non software) books?
#28Think & Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill
Taiko - Eiji Yoshikawa
Alexander of Macedon - Peter Green
and +1 for Staunch's choice:
Meditations - Marcus Aurelius
Re: Ask HN: Interesting (Non software) books?
#29Richard Dawkins' "Selfish Gene" and "God Delusion" are excellent reads.
Re: Ask HN: Interesting (Non software) books?
#30If you're feeling really introspective, His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman and Demian by Hermann Hesse.