Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Books on specific topics that have applied to many areas of your life?

news.ycombinator.com

41–50 of 110 posts

Re: Ask HN: Books on specific topics that have applied to many areas of your life?

#41
Franz de Waal's "Chimpanzee Politics". It's nominally about the social relationships of a chimp colony in a Dutch zoo. But it made me see the extent to which humans are just another great ape, and a lot of human dynamics are really primate dynamics, especially around social power.

Johnstone's "Impro". It's about improvisational theater, and mainly meant for people learning improv. But the section on status transactions helped me see a lot about how we express those primate dominance dynamics. There's also great material on the nature of creativity.

"Getting to Yes" is a great book about business negotiation, but is lessons about shifting discussions from zero-sum to positive-sum are things I use a lot.

Braitenberg's "Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology" is a way of thinking about psychology (and our inference of mind) by examining imaginary robots.

"The Toyota Way" and other books on Lean Manufacturing are about running extremely effective manufacturing operations. But they have deeply changed how I think about systems of making software and running businesses. Other great books in this category include "Toyota Kata" and "Principles of Product Development Flow".

"Crossing the Chasm" is about how tech products get adopted. But its mindset around segmenting audiences and building credibility taught me a lot about any sort of social change.

"Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men" is nominally about abuse in romantic relationships. But its insights about power and control have been useful to me way beyond that. E.g., so much behavior in large corporations is inexplicable if you look at it in business terms, and perfectly sensible if you think about if from the perspective of, "What would a person with abusive tendencies gain from this situation?"

Also, hearty +1s for books "Design of Everyday Things", "Finite and Infinite Games", and "Punished by Rewards".

Re: Ask HN: Books on specific topics that have applied to many areas of your life?

#42
"Impro for Storytellers" by Keith Johnstone is so relevant to pretty much everything about life and communication that I'm reading it the way people used to read the bible -- every night or two I take it off the nightstand and read a random passage, and think about it.

Re: Ask HN: Books on specific topics that have applied to many areas of your life?

#43
This is completely not tech related but I came across a PDF a few months ago called Endgame. I got it when I believed I was having issues with meeting and attracting women.

It kickstarted a series of events that’s completely changed my life. Initially for the worse but in a whole a massive positive.

Re: Ask HN: Books on specific topics that have applied to many areas of your life?

#45
1.Rice, Noodle, Fish: Deep Travels Through Japan's Food Culture by Matt Goulding

2.Oaxaca Journal by Oliver Sacks

3.A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor

4.Ernest Hemingway on Writing by Ernest Hemingway

5.Seven Elements That Have Changed the World: An Adventure of Ingenuity and Discovery by John Browne.

Re: Ask HN: Books on specific topics that have applied to many areas of your life?

#48
The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.

These two books taught me the importance of being true to one's values and not sacrificing them under any circumstances. They introduced me to Individualism and Objectivism which have profoundly impacted the way I look at the world.

Re: Ask HN: Books on specific topics that have applied to many areas of your life?

#49
The Predatory Female: A Field Guide to Dating and the Marriage-divorce Industry by Lawrence Shannon

The Manipulated Man by Esther Villar.

Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software by Charles Petzold.

The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus.

Post reply on HN