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Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
441–450 of 1001 posts
Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
#442"Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari. Hands down the book that most influenced me. The book had (for me) not one but several simple-yet-profound ideas that were forever inserted into the foreground of how I make sense of the world. For example, the existence of shared myths that allow humans to cooperate on a large scale. Or how I too, am religious, though I was sure I wasn't. Can't recommend…
It was a funny book in that he introduced very few facts about the world that I didn't already know, but that he tied all of it together so well. I find that I'm a much more empathetic and rational person whenever I try to frame my opinion of something/someone the way Harari would.
Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
#443Gibson's "The Peripheral." Not just a prescient story, but a veiled commentary on how easily we're using technology as a proxy for being there, and all the psychological changes that come along for the ride. "Neuromancer" was meh for me, but this one really reads well on all levels.
Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
#444Definitely "The Machine That Changed the World" by Womack, Jones, and Roos [0]. This is "the first book to reveal Toyota's lean production system." Before reading it, I had never imagined just-in-time production or value chain mapping, or vehicle assembly lines that can profitably produce quantity one of a product before being reconfigured to produce a different model (SMED: single minute exchange of die). Now I see…
I had a similar experience with The Toyota Way, which was also about Toyota's manufacturing process.
Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
#445Marx's "Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844" and "11th Theses on Feuerbach", Spinoza's "Ethics", and Adorno's "Negative Dialectic."
Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
#446Animal Farm was a really important book for me. I picked it up aged about 10 or 11 and I remember being really struck by how easily the pigs were able to exploit the other animals' grievances with humans to secure their own power. It felt like a grown-up story with some quite powerful, disturbing meanings under the covers. So I told my English teacher about it and all she told me in response was to go look up the Rus…
Does anyone have any recommendations for reading up on the Russian Revolution? Books, videos, or otherwise.
Trotsky's "My Life" is a good read.
Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
#447Seems most of the books recommended are for non-fiction, so I'll add some fiction to the mix.
The Hyperion Cantos series by Dan Simmons. It is deeply philosophical and caused me to think about life in a way no other science fiction has before or since. I found myself really sympathizing with the characters in these books, and found the overall plot incredibly fascinating.
Another good one is the Commonwealth Saga series (and others set in the same universe) by Peter F. Hamilton. It's a very _big_ space opera with lots of engaging characters, interesting technology, exciting descriptions of interstellar war, and a good reminder of just how unlike humanity an alien species could be. It really opened my mind to possibilities of humanity in the future in terms of how we might progress, both in terms of progressing out into the galaxy and how we could progress as a species.
Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
#448Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance This helped me understand the duality of the logical/mechanical and the creative/artistic. Then merging the two.
Yes! This book also got me to read Walden by Henry David Thoreau, which was also life changing.
I never fully understood what Pirsig meant by Quality though. I could not understand what it really was, but I didn’t need to. I got so much good out of the book. But if someone could explain better I’d love to hear.
Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
#449Animal Farm was a really important book for me. I picked it up aged about 10 or 11 and I remember being really struck by how easily the pigs were able to exploit the other animals' grievances with humans to secure their own power. It felt like a grown-up story with some quite powerful, disturbing meanings under the covers. So I told my English teacher about it and all she told me in response was to go look up the Rus…
One of the strangest things about that text is that very few of the folks I've talked to about it seem to feel that the issue with the pigs at the end is that there is a farmer. That is to say, I very rarely find anyone who will agree that the book is anti-capitalist at teh same time that it's opposed to Stalinism. I see the book continually taken happily anti-communist text. But the text is certainly not _just_ abou…
So many people seem to want to name-check Orwell for anti-communist purposes without recognizing that the man himself fought for a revolutionary socialist militia in the Spanish Civil War. In other words, he put his actual life on the line for communism (in the non-Stalinist form he interpreted it as), and actually ultimately probably died from complications related to injuries he sustained in that conflict.
Re: Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?
#450The Pali literature preserving the philosophy of early Buddhism: https://accesstoinsight.org/