Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?

I've registered here to write this. It is interesting that two most voted books here, Master and Margarita and Animal Farm are both about Stalin.

In MoM the all 3 main characters have real prototypes. Master is Author (Bulgakov), Margarita is Author's wife Elena, Woland is Stalin. Bulgakov was under assault of Soviet regime, he wanted to emigrate, but Stalin kept him in country. He was in constant fear of being detained for anti-soviet propaganda. Her wife which he loved a lot was forced to became secret informer, she reported periodically to officials against him. Bulgakov knew that, and this theme also in book. This moment is so tragic and central, because her wife was editor of the book. MoM is about exceptional courage of Bulgakov, his personal response to Staling, his sole main reader. At that time, just comparing Stalin to Statan was enough to be executed.

I highly recommend this course to understand better MoM https://arzamas.academy/courses/39 unfortunately it's in Russian.

That's worth knowing for some readers maybe, but for me personally after looking through the bullet points in that post, I found it didn't really apply to me.

None of the things he's criticizing were things I took away from the book. Examples, "If you're gonna go broke, go broke big"--> obviously stupid, just disregarded it; "Convinces people that college is for suckers" --> already was completing my degree, am well aware of the value of a higher education and also how it isn't for everyone, this had no impact on me whatsoever; "Advocates committing a felony: have rich friends for trading stock based on non-public inside information, he says "That's what friends are for." --> I am perfectly aware of what insider trading is and that it's a felony, again not exactly what I took away from this book.

And so on. What I took away was assets vs liabilities and using your money to make more money. That's it. And that's all I needed, that was the golden key.

The Millionaire Next Door.

I was raised in a culture where if someone has luxury items, a big house, and an expensive car, then they were rich.

The Millionaire Next Door defined wealth in a different way for me. Wealth was no longer how high your income was, but wealth become how long you could live without working. You can increase your wealth by saving/investing more and by lowering your expenses.

The Book of Mormon as well, for those of us raised in a certain cult. Also D&C 132[0] where Joseph Smith has a "Revelation" about taking multiple wives and basically threatens his wife with hell if she doesn't go along with it (she wasn't a huge fan of polygamy).

> And I command mine handmaid, Emma Smith, to abide and cleave unto my servant Joseph, and to none else. But if she will not abide this commandment she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord; for I am the Lord thy God, and will destroy her if she abide not in my law.

Turns out he was kind of a dick head.

[0] https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/132?lang=eng

I've been studying history privately for about 8 years now, and 'Maps of Time' by David Christian has fundamentally changed the way I look at the progression of mankind. Essentially, he's described from the highest possible level how modernity has come to be. There is too much detail in the book to go into depth, but it's a fascinating, and more than worthwhile read for the knowledge-seeker.

Another I'd add is 'The Selfish Gene' by Richard Dawkins. I have a Bachelor degree in science and never thought I'd be able to add to my understanding of evolution, but this book accomplished it. Almost everything I've studied can be broken into two periods - that I studied before reading the Selfish Gene, and what I studied after.

Lastly, I'd add Hume's 'Treatise on Human Nature', specifically his theory of substances. The basic idea was that as you learn more information about a substance, how you define that substance changes. First you see an orange ball, and you think it's just an orange colored ball. Later someone tells you it's a fruit, and your understanding of it changes.

How this is relevant is that I realized this can be applied to the world at large. Our understanding of any given phenomena is intrinsically linked to what we know about it. So there is no such thing as 'enlightenment' 'self-awareness' etc, there is only ever increasing awareness as we move through life, and we can also make a point to be intentional about increasing our own awareness.