If that's disqualified, I'd go with something like Lewis and Allison's "The Cheating of America" or just about anything by David Cay Johnston. Knowing who really pays and who really profits from government, and how, can really shine an interesting light on what might otherwise by inexplicable behavior from our so-called leaders.
Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
61–70 of 341 posts
Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
#62The book is simple mind blowing. It seems as if the entire history of homo sapiens which we learned in school was wrong. There was no slow progression, homo Sapiens and Neanderthals existed in the same time as did many ither species like homo erectus, but the perished before Sapiens.
It seems that our ability to form fictional entities (like money, state, society, country, religion etc) made us superior to other species. It seems that the basic ability to gossip helped us beat other species!
Completely mind blowing.
Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
#63Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
#64The main character Siddhartha experiences many different lives in search of true enlightenment. The book is so well written and way certain things are described are incredible.
Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
#65There is some hacking, and a strange battle against people wanting to believe their own truth (does that ring a bell?). Extremely contemporaneous, alas...
Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
#66"Prometheus Rising" by Robert Anton Wilson. This is the book that tied together lot of things that I was wondering about previously and it opened up few doors into new mazes of research that I'm still trying to traverse. Also, started reading books that he suggested: http://www.rawilson.com/bookstore.html#rec Edit: Added Wilson's suggested reading list
I'm quite to keen to try The Illuminatus Trillogy as well. His writing style is funny to me, in a similar way that Douglas Adams' is.
Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
#67Henry George, Progress and Poverty. http://www.henrygeorge.org/pdfs/PandP_Drake.pdf His ideas are fabulous, but that aside reading it is a joy. He truly has a love for his fellow man that transcends all the usual pity-via-charity and sees real value in all. A forgotten favourite of many great thinkers. Forgotten for a reason!
Are his ideas taken seriously by mainstream economists?
Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
#68"Gödel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter, which I read when I was 17. I was just getting into serious programming (I would learn C later that year). I had only an inkling about things like recursion, had little appreciation for music outside of Pink Floyd, and lacked any kind of spiritual philosophy that didn't end in simple atheism or nonsense that I stole from science fiction paperbacks. GEB got me wondering abo…
I tried to read it in my middle thirties and felt like I wasn't prepared enough to understand it. Should I just go through it without trying to get everything?
Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
#69I've got a tie between two books: 1) Design of Everyday Things by Dan Norman This book ruined my life. I highly recommend it. Every engineer, manager and designer should read this. Maybe every human. I think of this book every time I try to pull a push door, every time I reach the bottom floor of a stairwell and notice the design that might save my life one day, and every time I try to struggle to operate a televisio…
Re: Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?
#70The Alchemist.