It sounds like you're asking for Gravity's Rainbow, which is the predecessor of both Neal Stephenson and the Illuminatus trilogy, and 10x more annoying to decode.
Ask HN: What is the most mind blowing book you've ever read?
101–110 of 151 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is the most mind blowing book you've ever read?
#102human life values
i started this book as a child thinking I was an adult. i finished it and i really was.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most mind blowing book you've ever read?
#103Permutation City, by Greg Egan. It's one of my favourites.
Yes, the first few chapters were mind-bogglingly good. Loses its punch towards the end, but the first two thirds floored me.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most mind blowing book you've ever read?
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
I read 'Guns, Germs and Steel' by Jared Diamond in College and it is single handedly the most insightful book I have ever read. One of these days I will buy all of Jared Diamond's and Robert Greene's books and read them multiple times.
'Guns, Germs and Steel' is pure geographical determinism, dressed up as something else.
What is it more specifically that you disagree with in Diamond’s theories?
Re: Ask HN: What is the most mind blowing book you've ever read?
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regarding 'the selfish gene', I still think that the concept that the gene is the unit of evolution and the resulting organism is just its proxy, is one of the greatest insights since Darwin.
Be that as it might, that is not Dawkins' idea (i believe the foremost thinker in that regard is W. D. Hamilton), what Dawkins did was just giving it the catchy name.
'folli never claimed it was Dawkins’ idea ;-)
”what Dawkins did was just giving it the catchy name”
Well, he also wrote an accessible book on the subject. And that book is littered with references to other literature on the subject.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most mind blowing book you've ever read?
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
'Guns, Germs and Steel' is pure geographical determinism, dressed up as something else.
What is it more specifically that you disagree with in Diamond’s theories?
I suggest reading this: https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/2vf565/myths_of... and other posts in the AskHistorians SubReddit.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most mind blowing book you've ever read?
#107Maybe not mind-blowing but life-altering: The Turing Omnibus, by A.K. Dewdney. I read it while in high school and it made me decide to learn computer science. It has 50 short chapters on things like RSA cryptography, the halting problem, logic circuits, perceptrons.
For fiction, Ted Chiang is my go-to author when I want my mind blown.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most mind blowing book you've ever read?
#108Greg Bear's "The City At The End of Time" It has its flaws, but there are more cool SF ideas in this book than practically anything I've ever read.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most mind blowing book you've ever read?
#109Banker to the poor - the story of Muhammad Yusuf 's grameen & micro-finance, over-coming odds, and a good read if you are curious about lending.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most mind blowing book you've ever read?
#110Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand also, not a book but very good "The last question" Isaac Asimov [1] [1] http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html
Could you explain why you find Atlas Shrugged mind blowing? I read "we the living" and "The fountainhead" and found them quite annoying. Haven't read Atlas Shrugged, just curious if I am missing something.
I read The Fountainhead when I was 18 and I found it absolutely mind blowing. Needless to say, I was quite impressionable at the time, and a young atheist. The book served as positive reinforcement to me, emphasizing on belief in oneself, rather than belief in God. It was also the perfect fodder for my teen angst, wrapped in delicious ideological and intellectual mysticism.
This led me to be an unapologetic jerk to everyone around me for a year or so. I laugh thinking about it now.