Everyone should read a platonic dialogue. Plato's Republic in particular due to its influence on western thought. Although some of the ideas may seem absurd from our modern point of view, it's still thought provoking and a good example of old school philosophy. Also, Plato casually outlines why our current system of government is doomed to fail...which is probably pretty important to understand.
Ask HN: What is one book you would recommend everyone to read?
81–90 of 365 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is one book you would recommend everyone to read?
#82The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan
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Re: Ask HN: What is one book you would recommend everyone to read?
#83Enchiridion of Epictetus (and other Stoicism works like Marcus Aurelus Meditations). I myself prefer the epicurism point of view, but this book learn you mainly than there is not point to be to much emotional on the many things in life than you cannot control.
Re: Ask HN: What is one book you would recommend everyone to read?
#84I guess it would depend on the category, like if you are doing any sort of front-end dev then one book I'd recommend over any other is Don't make me think which is still relevant today. For the smb/indie-hacking I think E-myth revisited really changes your whole perspective about running a small business, especially when you read yourself on the pages. Also there is one book which I don't think everybody should read…
The E-myth revisited seems to be one of those business books where they took something that could have been an article, or maybe even a paragraph, and dragged it out into a whole (extremely dull) book.
Re: Ask HN: What is one book you would recommend everyone to read?
#85I've gifted copies of Six Easy Pieces [0] to numerous people now, it's the only book I can say that for.
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5553.Six_Easy_Pieces
Re: Ask HN: What is one book you would recommend everyone to read?
#86“The Scapegoat” by Rene Girard, which suggests that we are deeply vulnerable to imitating others; and that when we imitate, this tends to lead to deep conflict, for we often imitate desire for scarce objects (e.g. a certain role at work, a particular romantic partner, etc.). We also tend to imitate hatred for a given party, as we tend to imitate hatred, too; thus engaging in the process of scapegoating, when, in fact, scapegoats are almost always innocent.
Re: Ask HN: What is one book you would recommend everyone to read?
#87It's hard to pick only one but "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" by Burton Gordon Malkiel gave me some much needed financial literacy in my 20s.
Re: Ask HN: What is one book you would recommend everyone to read?
#88Books:
Most of you will know it, but to make sure: I wouldn't want to die without having read
"Gödel Escher Bach - An Eternal Golden Braid" (Douglas R. Hofstadter),
a 1000-page recursive poem about consciousness, bio-chemistry, mathematical versus musical beauty, zen koans, recursion, symmetry, formal rule systems, AI and more. Every second chapter is written as a dialog.
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky)
In our time, media manipulation is at its historic peak, so perhaps everyone should know a bit about the political-economic underpinnings. How issues are framed and chosen, the influence of money, reporting biases.
Dining with Terrorists: Meetings with the World's Most Wanted Militants (Phil Rees)
A former BBC journalist tells about meals with 'interesting' people and the trickiness associated with the definition of 'terrorism'.
I'm also going to throw in some movies for good measure.
Films:
Meaning of Life https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085959/
Adam's Apples https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0418455/
Harold and Maude https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067185/
Re: Ask HN: What is one book you would recommend everyone to read?
#89The best two books for engineers are 1) “How to win friends and influence people” 2) “Never split the difference” The first one will teach you how to work with people. The second will teach you how to negotiate salaries, raises, and promotions among other things. I don’t recommend many technical books because engineers can find all of that on the internet and are much more at risk of being bad at people stuff.
> 1) “How to win friends and influence people”
The folks I know who have this on their bookshelf tend to be dishonest, manipulative, self-centered pricks.
Re: Ask HN: What is one book you would recommend everyone to read?
#90The best two books for engineers are 1) “How to win friends and influence people” 2) “Never split the difference” The first one will teach you how to work with people. The second will teach you how to negotiate salaries, raises, and promotions among other things. I don’t recommend many technical books because engineers can find all of that on the internet and are much more at risk of being bad at people stuff.
"How to win friends and influence people" contains so much self-repetition that it should be easily compressible to four pages, no doubt many people on the Internet have done that. Read one of those instead.