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Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?

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211–220 of 399 posts

Re: Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?

#211
post #66

The hidden persuaders by Vance Packard I read this book as a kid, it changed how I view the world and I've never forgotten it's lessons. It shows how the ad world is working hard to persuade you. It convinced me to always question what are represented as facts by ads or the media. A healthy skepticism has served me very well. Most people never deeply question and Packard is correct that there's an entire industry try…

Sounds very interesting, but is there a more recent book covering similar material? This dates from 1957 and I suspect there is more to say about it now.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?

#213
post #126

Science, Politics and Gnosticism: Two essays by Eric Voegelin, https://www.amazon.com/Science-Politics-Gnosticism-Two-Essay... I found it to be a very interesting and deep take on the philosophical and historical origins of many contemporary political currents. The Road to Serfdom, by F. Hayek, a liberal economist. I found it very well written, amusing and even hilarious in how even in the 1940's supporters of commun…

Road to Serfdom is some of the most simplistic empty bilge I've read, bordering on unreadable. I guess it's pushing 35 years ago I read it, while I was still a keen supporter of the mainstream right, after an enthusiastic loan from a fellow Thatcherite friend. In reading it I found it so absurdly weak and obviously hollow that it started me questioning all "known facts" and "common sense" of my politics. That was the point that started my search for a range of economic and political viewpoints, reading deeper, and moved me away from Thatcherism to the centre ground!

The writing style was terrible, as every third sentence seems to close with something like "and this inevitably leads to socialism and serfdom, and eliminates freedom". Only a dozen or so pages in and I was thoroughly sick of this device, as it's becoming clear that's his main and just about only argument -- extreme repetition.

It's a short article padded to a book length rant that anything less than total laissez-faire market libertarianism leads to slavery, serfdom, social democracy, socialism, nazism or communism (He appears to understand no difference between any of these). That any tiny government plan, regulation or service must lead to totalitarianism and blackshirts.

So my memory is also of finding it hilarious, I suspect for very different reasons. I also remember being left completely baffled as to why it ever got to be popular. :)

Re: Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?

#214

I'll venture "The Third Policeman" for comic surrealism. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27208.The_Third_Policema...

One of my favorites, if you couldn’t guess from my user name. At-Swim-Two-Birds is also wonderful. Flann O’Brien isn’t completely obscure, but not very well known in the US.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?

#215

How To Measure Anything [1] by Douglas Hubbard. The basic gist of the book goes something like this: in the real world (especially in a business setting) there are many things which are hard to measure directly, but which we may care about. Take, for example, "employee morale" which matters because it may affect, say, retention, or product quality. Hubbard suggests that we can measure (many|most|all|??) of these thin…

Sounds interesting. I’m sure the book covers this, but isn’t this how you wind up with perverse incentives? Once managers figure out that you’re measuring X as a proxy for Y “thing we actually care about” they’re going to start optimizing for X, with potentially unpleasant results.

This goes back to the whole correlation does not equal causation thing in statistics.

You're likely thinking of a correlated number, the measurement number must be a causative. Direct improvements on any causative number will by definition affect the outcome.

Say we're looking at developer retention. A correlated number is like scrum points. A causative number is like salary.

Of course, while the data on the causative and correlative effectiveness of both metrics is dispute-able... you still get my point.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?

#216

Severely underappreciated (IMO) is British psychiatrist Marion Milner's A Life of One's Own [1] (1934, as "Joanna Field") - an extraordinary recounting of the author's subjective yet diligent observational study of her own awareness and mental processes from first principles and with as few assumptions as possible. The results were unexpected! > As soon as I began to study my perception, to look at my own experience,…

I came across A Life Of One's Own as a teenager, and she became one of my heroes in courage and self-exploration, a great inspiration. The sequels An Experiment in Leisure and On Not Being Able To Paint are also excellent. On Not Being Able To Paint initially didn't seem as interesting, but I picked up my copy again 20 years later and found that what she'd learnt about art was almost exactly what I'd learnt from 5 ye…

> she became one of my heroes

The book had a similar impact on myself & partner after we picked it up randomly from a clearance box in a used book store.

The idea that truly owning one's life, thoughts, behaviour and so on is a project to undertake - and not (as might be commonly assumed for successful healthy indiviuals) an effortlessly given state of affairs - seems remarkable for the time she was writing.

From that point of view, there's something singular about on the one hand her observations being utterly unburdened by psychological theory and on the other the scope of what she's attempting!

Re: Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?

#217
I consider Michael Polanyi's works to be very important in a certain way.

MP's The Tacit Dimension (1966, ~120pp) is a good introduction to his ideas about "Tacit knowledge", i.e. 'we can know more than we can tell', e.g. facial recognition. , A quick and enjoyable read that might appeal to many in this crowd.

Akin to Hadamard's Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field.

If you've got time, MP's earlier Personal Knowledge (1958, ~400pp) might be a worthwhile deeper-dive. I recall that his style reminded me of Lewis Thomas.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?

#218
Half of a Yellow Sun[1] by Chimamanda Ngozi.

If you want to sample probably a different style and culture, I would highly recommend this book. This is a 2006 novel by a prolific African writer and is set in the late 1960s Biafran times in Nigeria. There is a lot in it and is richly written.

[1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18749.Half_of_a_Yellow_S...

Re: Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?

#219
post #179

The Network Revolution – confessions of a computer scientist (1982)¹ is the title which immediately springs to mind. I never see anyone else mention this book, but I liked it. One of the many interesting things it contains is an anonymized telling of what happened with Doug Engelbart and why, even after giving the dazzling “ The Mother of All Demos ”², the SRI company did not succeed in its grand plan for the future…

I remember reading about Lee Felsenstein and Community Memory in Hackers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Compute...

But yeah, I guess it came out 2 years later.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?

#220
post #51

A Russian one - “Three Jews” by Muhin. Stupid title, but it’s an incredible account of author’s life and work at a steel plant in Soviet Union in 70-80s. Probably not translated, but highly recommended for all Russian speakers.

Is that the same Muhin who is an avowed Anti-Semite ?
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