Ask HN: What book changed your life in 2014?

Caesar's Commentaries, by Julius Gaius Caesar

Teaches that while technology will change and political systems will be distinct and nuanced, the human animal is just about the same.

When I see something that people did then that they still do today, I find that I can predict what a group of people is likely to do in a given situation in the future.

This both blows my mind as things "click" and makes me sad. In either case, I'm better prepared.

The Great Bridge is a phenomenal engineering story (and so much more). The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich was chilling but I'd read it again. Simply fascinating, written by a western reporter who was actually there.

Love and Math: The Heart of Hidden Reality - by Edward Frenkel http://www.amazon.com/Love-Math-Heart-Hidden-Reality/dp/0465...

Such a great book for people who love math. The end of the book gets a little bit hairy with more complex subjects but it is a great story from Mr Frenkel of going from school to working on the Langlands Project - toted as the rosetta stone for math. Defiantly a must read for anyone who wants to get into mathematics as a career

I think you may be doing economics somewhat of an injustice. There is certainly a lot of politics and some unfounded conjecture too, but in many cases it is the social "science" that manages to use formalization to reach real conclusions. Macroeconomics concepts such as "stimulus" are usually the example of the bad kind. But a lot of economics, especially microeconomics isn't.

There are real usable conclusions that have come out of economics too. For example, the idea that trade is good for both parties has been largely adopted thanks to the formal arguments that eventually won over the majority of economists. This goes back to Adam Smith and David Ricardo. The idea of floating exchange rates comes from economics departments and it has prevented a lot of currency catastrophes.

It's still social science and it's asked to provide answers for questions that it can't answer.

Pickety's ideas are interesting and so his his data. But, they are still new and in debate. Perhaps they hold some lasting insight into long term changes in wealth disparities, but the jury is still out from an academic perspective.