What one book could give me a new, useful superpower?

Sowell's "Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy" is also good.

I have read the book during my difficult times and even during good times. I was able to relate to the various phases of Siddhartha's life. Also liked the certain amount of randomness in the sequence of certain events.

However, I must admit that not everyone may like the book. Some folks I know religiously follow the book as a life guide while some didn't find it all that meaningful. Its entirely on how you want to interpret the book.

It's your study that gives you new skills, not the books, having said this, the following guided the most valuable learning experiences in my life:

"What is Mathematics?" by Richard Courant taught me to think at a higher level of abstraction. I read it after I realized the parts of SICP (which recommendation here I obviously second) I liked most were the math-related parts and I think it is fair to call it a SICP for mathematics, at least I don't know a book that comes closer. Then I also used Courant's "Differential and Integral Calculus" and Spivaks "Calculus" with his very detailed answer book, and this way I self-taught myself enough material to finally be able to do some reasonably serious math, e.g. proofs.

After reading "Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools" I wrote my own implementation of grep with state machines, then a compiler for a simple language and finally understood what a programming language really is. "Programming Language Pragmatics" was a very useful book here, too, thanks to it teaching me a range of different possible semantics for common concepts in programming languages I was able to learn new languages much more easily and easily spot bugs that I would otherwise spent hours on.

"The Mindful Way through Depression" and the accompanying CD with guided meditations taught me to meditate and meditation forever changed the way I react do difficult situations.

"Starting Strength" taught me correct exercise technique that completely changed the outcomes of my strength training.

I would absolutely recommend the Roman Stoics. The privileged ones lived like kings, but were prone to lose everything if the political climate changed. Their lives were absolutely unpredictable and they found ways of dealing with it in their heads. One can read advice from a philosopher/teacher who was later killed by his disciple (Seneca, forced to commit suicide by Nero), maybe the best Roman emperor ever (Marcus Aurelius) or a slave who was freed only later in life (Epicetus). Those guys knew that nothing was theirs forever but dealt with it in a graceful way.

Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha. It's a guide to Vipasanna meditation, the central practice of Burmese buddhism.

Two reasons why HN readers might find it interesting:

a) The author claims to have gained enlightenment - yes, enlightenment with a capital 'E', the thing the original Buddha achieved under his tree, and he claims that you can do the same.

b) if you're thinking "ok, this writer's a new age nutcase, moving on...", the author's day job is as a medical doctor and he applies a strong scientific sensibility to his experiences.

The whole thing is written in a very rational, down-to-earth style. He also rants about how new age practioners in the west have turned meditation into this aimless, chill-out practice when actually in certain Asian countries it's seen as something with definite stages and goals.

My view of meditation is that it's basically about training and hacking your mind. There's three main practices: concentration training, which is what it sounds like - focusing your mind on one object; insight training, which is basically running netstat on your perceptual system; and morality, which is integrating your learnings from meditation into an ethical life.

Potential benefits:

- better ability to concentrate and avoid procrastination

- you can learn to feel happy all the time. It's not that you never feel negative emotions, but they're always be an undercurrent of peace and relaxation when you learn to stop fighting negative feelings.

- you can access mental states which are not too unlike those caused by taking certain drugs, without the negative side-effects (though it is possible to get "meditation hangover").

- most importantly, you'll learn to train your mind to put it to whatever tasks you deem important.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1904658407/ref=as_li_ss_t...