
Ask HN: What are your favorite non-fiction books of all time? - StriverGuy
What are the best non-fiction books you have read that expanded your views, hobbies, interests etc.
======
rayalez
\- "Rationality: From AI to Zombies" \- probably the most influential book
I've read in my life, profoundly changed the way I think. It's a collection of
LessWrong essays on science and rationality.

\- "On Intelligence" and "I am a Strange Loop" \- how mind works.

\- "Rework", "Zero to One", "Start Small, Stay Small" \- insightful startup
advice.

\- Fun autobiographies: Ghost in the Wires (Kevin Mitnick), iWoz (Steve
Wozniak), Catch me if you can (Frank Abagnale), Just for Fun (Linus Torvalds),
Elon Musk, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!

\- How companies work: Creativity Inc (Pixar), In the Plex (Google)

\- On writing: Art of fiction/nonfiction by Ayn Rand, Story by Robert McKee,
Save the Cat, Step by Step to Standup Comedy.

\- Other: The Selfish Gene, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience,
Serious Creativity, Hackers & Painters, Hacking Growth, Angel (on angel
investing, by Jason Calacanis).

Also collections of essays by Paul Graham [1] and Scott Alexander [2]:

[1]
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/2no0sqybnxurpcd/Paul%20Graham%20-%...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/2no0sqybnxurpcd/Paul%20Graham%20-%20Complete%20Essays.epub?dl=0)

[2]
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/i43lqpdyd4qa255/The%20Library%20of...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/i43lqpdyd4qa255/The%20Library%20of%20Scott%20Alexandria%20-%20Scott%20Alexander.epub?dl=0)

~~~
sorenn111
The Selfish Gene has been the most influential book on my life. Especially
when Dawkins makes the point about pre-darwininan philosophy needing
rethinking. His point being that natural selection/evolution is such a
profound notion that it should be embedded into the underpinnings of
philosophy itself.

~~~
mirceal
You know, when I first saw (many years ago) an animation of DNA replication my
first though was: hey, this looks like code. Imagine my suprise seeing this
Dawkins fellow comparing DNA to code in the beggining of the “The Blind
Watchmaker”. Great minds... something something.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Hah, I remember learning about how DNA works in secondary school. You know,
there's this "reading frame" that reads "triplets of nucleotides"... just like
a CPU reading machine instructions! Might have had something to do with me
reading an intro book to x86 ASM at that time.

------
TeMPOraL
Please don't... every time a thread like this shows up on HN, I end up
impulsively buying some of the recommended books. I'm usually very happy about
the purchase, though. :).

Humor aside; not sure if favourite of all times, but definitely impacted my
thinking a lot:

\- "Rationality: From AI to Zombies" \- [https://intelligence.org/rationality-
ai-zombies/](https://intelligence.org/rationality-ai-zombies/) \- read this
when it was still a bunch of posts by 'Eliezer on LessWrong. It cleaned up my
thinking quite a bit, and introduced to couple new ideas from economics,
sociology and epistemology.

\- SICP, obviously.

\- "How to Win Friends and Influence People", and "How to Stop Worrying and
Start Living" \- from the father of the whole genre of self-help/personal
development, and one whose books are still probably the only good ones in this
genre, Dale Carnegie. They explain exactly what it says in their titles.

------
itpragmatik
1\. Sapiens -
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23692271-sapiens](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23692271-sapiens)

2\. The Gene: An Intimate History -
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27276428-the-
gene](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27276428-the-gene)

3\. I Contain Multitudes -
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29083367-i-contain-
multi...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29083367-i-contain-multitudes)

4\. Stuff Matters - [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19553030-stuff-
matters](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19553030-stuff-matters)

5\. Rework -
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6732019-rework](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6732019-rework)

~~~
mirceal
Sapiens is an okay book, but it’s all over the place. On one hand it kinda
says that in many regards we have hypothesis at best (ie we don’t know) to
follow it with [sometimes] wild theories. There is no way you can cover as
much ground as the author wanted in a book this size. It got diluted and
turned into the classic “X best seller” crap.

~~~
dominotw
I listened to the audiobook but never understood the hype behind it. Seemed
like bunch of speculation akin to Malcom Gladwell books.

~~~
mirceal
That’s the classic recipe for a “best seller”. A lot of hype and polish but of
little substance.

------
briga
The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch. The sheer breadth of the ideas
covered in this book is breathtaking, and there are some truly mind-bending
ideas explored in this book. If you're looking for a good general science book
I highly recommend this one.

Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom. Few thinkers have thought about this issue
as deeply as Bostrom, and it was fascinating to hear his thoughts on AI.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. Pretty traumatic read but essential if you
really want to understand a dark and overlooked chapter of American history

~~~
Upvoter33
I would love to hear more commentary on Bostrom. From the parts I've heard (in
podcasts - still haven't read the book), it is a lot of talking about
technology that is nowhere near where we are today, and thus (to me), a waste
of time. But I am open to being convinced otherwise...

~~~
hannasanarion
The prologue to Superintelligence was written with just for you. It is
available here:

The Unfinished Parable of the Sparrows
[https://blog.oup.com/2014/08/unfinished-fable-sparrows-
super...](https://blog.oup.com/2014/08/unfinished-fable-sparrows-
superintelligence/)

------
pwillia7
I recently read Sapiens - Yuval Noah Harari and it nearly broke my mind. It
was on Obama and Bill Gates' reading lists that year and it is phenomenal.
It's like one of those books that took some ideas I had been kicking around
for years and blew the whole thing wide open.

If you want to get a taste, go look up 'The Legend of Peugot' from the book.

There was also a sale on the ebook for $3 on Amazon this weekend -- not sure
if it's still going.

~~~
dominotw
> it nearly broke my mind.

Can you perhaps mention some examples?

~~~
TheAlchemist
There are a lot of fantastic ideas (whether one agree or not with the author)
in this book. 2 that come to my mind:

\- we tend to think that our species was a result of evolution - a concept
that's somehow nice and smooth. In reality, the author argues, at each step of
the evolution, the 'better' species simply exterminated the previous one.
Think about that ! We (or our ancestor) just exterminated those poor
Neanderthals that we so fondly think of now

\- when he describes a corporation and applicable law (I think it's about
Peugeot) comparing the lawyers to shamans. It really makes you realizes how
most things and laws of what govern our world are just pure invention and it's
very similar to religion actually

~~~
hannasanarion
So, it's Nacirema: The Book?

------
b1gnasty
The Story of Civilization - Will and Ariel Durant

Reading this so far has been one of the most rewarding learning experiences of
my life. If you are interested in how philosophy, religion, and civilization
has emerged and grown in our species, than you will be constantly delighted
while reading this. The Durants are equal to none.

~~~
jhbadger
It is a bit unfortunate that the Durants crammed all non-Western history in a
single volume while devoting ten to European history, but it was a product of
its time. Still, it is certainly well written and few historians attempt this
sort of "complete" history these days.

~~~
sonabinu
True... it’s an amazing volume on western philosophy but fails to adequately
look at philosophy from other cultures.

------
w1
Not really a book, but...

The Berkshire-Hathaway shareholder letters are very entertaining and
informative, and reading Warren is probably the best way to deeply understand
the last ~40 years of US business climate.

[http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters.html](http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters.html)

~~~
TheAlchemist
Oh I can only agree ! Each year I'm eagerly waiting for it.

To complement, I would add two books from Buffett and Munger:

\- "The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life" by Alice Schroeder

\- "Poor Charlie's Almanack" by Charlie Munger - a fantastic read

------
amrrs
1\. Born a Crime (audiobook) by Trevor Noah is an entertaining yet thought-
provoking listen

2\. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (just gives a different perception to success
all together, at least did for me)

3\. Mastery (Robert Greene) - can be dismissed as Anecdotes but really
powerful ones

4\. Deep Work (Cal Newport) - a guy who doesn't like to be on social media and
I found reading about him and stumbled upon this and it's absolutely an
insightful read

5\. The subtle art of not giving a f __k - This is a short, beautiful and an
amazing read even if you aren 't looking for self improvement

------
EngineerBetter
Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb has implications that I find impact very
disparate areas. It's hard work in places though.

The Quark and the Jaguar by Murray Gell-Mann is a wonderfully readable and
accessible intro to complexity, which again is a topic that seems to crop up
all over the place.

Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine cites a shedload of research to dispel
gender-related myths. It should be taught in schools, in my opinion.

------
dasmoth
John Seymour's self sufficiency books.

Haven't been able to put it all into practise, but they opened my eyes to
what's possible, and provided some motivation to make the best use of the
space we've got.

------
DanBC
_Bomber Command_ by Max Hastings. This book explained the change in Allies
attitudes around bombing during WWII from "only barbarians bomb civillians" to
the mass fire bombing of heavily populated cities. It was also eye-opening to
read about the massive death rate in bomber command.
[https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bomber-Command-Pan-Military-
Classic...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bomber-Command-Pan-Military-
Classics/dp/0330513613/)

 _The Art of Electronics_ , and especially the student manual that accompanies
it. I read these a long time ago, and at the time it was a pretty good
introductionto electronics, especially if you bought some cheap second hand
test equipment and had a few breadboards and components to do the lab work.
I'm not sure if it's aged well. There are a bunch of people on HN who still do
electronic work who could recommend better newer books.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _I 'm not sure if it's aged well. There are a bunch of people on HN who
> still do electronic work who could recommend better newer books._

Not a professional in this area, but between various HN comments I've read and
YouTube channels like EEVblog, I've seen the third edition of this book
recommended multiple times as _the_ best book. It's actually sitting on my to-
buy list because of that.

------
tuxguy
"when breath becomes air" by Paul Kalanithi. Influenced me a great deal & one
of my all time fav reads. A short excerpt :
[https://stanmed.stanford.edu/2015spring/before-i-
go.html](https://stanmed.stanford.edu/2015spring/before-i-go.html)

------
kamphey
The Warren Commission Report.

Originally suggested by Werner Herzog as the most thrilling book ever written.
It's ludicrously detailed. Absolutely riveting and thrilling. Opened my eyes
to how a story can be constructed around a single moment and elucidated by a
huge investigation.

------
clinth
A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson --
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21.A_Short_History_of_Ne...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21.A_Short_History_of_Nearly_Everything)

First half of the book changed my life, and second half is merely good. I
wrote a full review [0], and eight years later, that first half has become one
of my favorite reads ever.

[0]: [http://www.spaceponies.com/review-of-a-short-history-of-
near...](http://www.spaceponies.com/review-of-a-short-history-of-nearly-
everything-by-bill-bryson.html)

~~~
nphadke
Oh yes! A Short History of Nearly Everything is really good. I thoroughly
enjoyed it (Bill Bryson can write funnier than anyone I've read, apart from
P.G. Wodehouse). I would just add a caveat that I read it first in junior high
and it blew my mind. Maybe for someone who is read up a bit more, it might not
be as mindblowing.

------
Symmetry
_The Secret of Our Success_ on the co-evolution of humans and human culture.

 _The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French
Revolution_ on what are states, where do they come from, and how do they work?

 _The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life_ is
just what it says on the tin.

 _The Strategy of Conflict_ is the original book on game theory which stands
up pretty well.

 _Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts_
on the modern science of what we know about what consciousness is.

~~~
headsupernova
I'm a third of the way through the Vital Question - absolutely amazing read so
far. The concept of eukaryotes' high energy per gene opening up the doors for
all of this marvelous complexity is so simple and powerful. Can't wait to keep
reading.

------
scop
It may be interesting at the end of this thread to take an inventory of the
publishing dates of listed books. Will most be modern? Will many come from
learned past of our elders?

It is hard for me to select a favorite. However as a voracious reader there is
only one author for whom I have found myself re-reading his books multiple
times: Robert Sarah.

He has published two books:

The Power of Silence (extended reflection on silence and the human condition)
God or Nothing (autobiography + reflections on current affairs)

------
thaumasiotes
_Pre-Industrial Societies: Anatomy of the Pre-Modern World_
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1780747411/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1780747411/)

 _Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near
East_
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195313984/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195313984/)

 _The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the Economy
Bigger_
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691136408/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691136408/)

 _The Mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon: An Elusive World Wonder
Traced_
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CG3JMD0/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CG3JMD0/)

 _The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature_
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/0670031518/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0670031518/)

------
rubinelli
"Zen in the Art of Writing: Essays on Creativity" is a short book that anyone
that has any interest in Ray Bradbury's work or in fiction writing should
read.

"The Power of Habit" by Charles Duhigg and "Influence: The Psychology of
Persuasion" by Robert Cialdini are both books that showed how and why you
often act against your best interest.

------
myth_buster
Gun germs and steel

The Innovator's Dilemma

Thinking Fast and Slow

Godel Eschel Bach

Hard Things about Hard Things

------
mrmrcoleman
“Soft skills” are typically the hardest.

The Power of Vulnerability: Brene Brown

Non-Violent Communication: Marshall Rosenberg

The Secrets of Consulting: Gerald Weinberg

------
siruncledrew
The MIT Press books are good and cover a range of subjects:
[https://mitpress.mit.edu/topics](https://mitpress.mit.edu/topics)

Some are pretty short reads as well. I just read "Information and Society" and
enjoyed it.

------
cdoxsey
GK Chesteron's Orthodoxy:
[http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/130/pg130-images.html](http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/130/pg130-images.html)

------
pjmorris
Offhand...

1\. 'The Making of the Atomic Bomb', R. Rhodes

2\. 'Apollo: Race to the Moon', C. Murray, C. Cox

3\. 'The Prize', D. Yergin

4\. 'Are Your Lights On?', D. Gause, G. Weinberg

5\. 'Becoming A Technical Leader', G. Weinberg

------
iammiles
Endurance by Alfred Lansing - It's a well-written book about the incredible
story of Earnest Shackleton's attempt to be the first team to cross Antarctica
by land.

------
kevinmchugh
Command And Control, by Eric Schlosser. A history of America's nuclear weapons
program and it's many near-disasters.

Raven, by Tim Reiterman. Biography of Jim Jones by one of the journalists
who'd reported the story the longest.

Liquid Intelligence, by Dave Arnold. Everything you need to know to understand
cocktails and make good ones.

On Food and Cooking, by Harold McGee. An exhaustive reference on the history
and science of food and ingredients. Every page has something surprising and
useful.

------
adventured
In no particular order.

Empires of Light, by Jonnes. Titan, by Chernow. The Wright Brothers, by
McCullough. His Excellency, by Ellis. The Wizard of Menlo Park, by Stross. I
Invented the Modern Age, by Snow. Dealers of Lightning, by Hiltzik. Margin of
Safety, by Klarman. Masters of Doom, by Kushner. Andrew Carnegie, by Nasaw.
Infidel, by Hirsi Ali. Buffett, by Lowenstein. Where Wizards Stay Up Late, by
Hafner. Shoe Dog, by Knight. The Making of the Atomic Bomb, by Rhodes.

------
TheTrotters
The Power Broker and all volumes of The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert
Caro. The best books I've ever read. I effectively re-read them all every year
or two.

------
quicratoric_28
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fc*k by Mark Manson

------
xhrpost
Daring Greatly by Brene Brown This book has had a profound impact for years
now on how I look at myself and those around me. I never saw shame as it's own
entity beforehand and simply thought it was part of culture and the way things
are. Now I see it as something to avoid like the plague for the sake of myself
and those around me.

------
mpax
One, Two, Three: Absolutely Elementary Mathematics by David Berlinski

Often gets low ratings because people mistake it for an educational book. It’s
a mix of history, biographies and verbal exposition on the development of
mathematical theorems, with a good poetic slant. Reminds me I really need to
look into his other books, his writing is scarily good.

------
berbec
Tokyo Vice by Jake Adlestein [1]

It's the story of a foreigner working as a serious reporter in Japan. He finds
that the US government has been essentially selling organs to the Yakuza crime
lords. No, really!

1:
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/0307475298](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0307475298)

~~~
justaguyhere
You might like this one, not sure how much of it is true and how much is made
up

[https://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John-
Perkins...](https://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John-
Perkins/dp/0452287081/)

~~~
merrua
I found that a fun read. No idea how much of it is real.

------
hprotagonist
Blanchard, Devaney and Hall, "Differential Equations". The first math textbook
I found that you can actually _read_.

Oppenheim, Willsky, and Nawab, "Signals and Systems". The foundational modern
text for signals processing; Fourier analysis becomes a fundamental way of
thinking.

------
whoisstan
1\. - 5. "A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History" by Manuel De Landa

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/88941.A_Thousand_Years_o...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/88941.A_Thousand_Years_of_Nonlinear_History)

------
btschaegg
Views: _Last chance to see_ , by Douglas Adams.

Not only does he talk about Animals the average human never gets to see, it's
also full of weird insights because of his often rather unique perspective on
things. Plus, it's Adams, so it's _very_ entertaining.

------
bartcobain
1\. The psychick bible by Genesis Breyer P. Orridge. 2\. Breakthroughs in
science by Isaac Asimov

------
RhysU
What is a Dog?
[https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/W/bo183782...](https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/W/bo18378250.html)

------
sonabinu
Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk by Peter L. Bernstein
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/128429.Against_the_Gods](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/128429.Against_the_Gods)

The Physics of Wall Street: A Brief History of Predicting the Unpredictable by
James Owen Weatherall [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13356644-the-
physics-of-...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13356644-the-physics-of-
wall-street)

Faster Than Thought: A Symposium on Digital Computing Machines (1953) by B. V.
Bowden. [http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/10719/Faster-Than-
Tho...](http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/10719/Faster-Than-Thought-A-
Symposium-on-Digital-Computing-Machines-1953/)

------
aparks517
Handbook of Filter Synthesis by Zverev. It’s out of print, but gives a nice
tour of the field with good references. Beautiful charts and tables.

Design of Crystal and Other Harmonic Oscillators by Parzen delighted me with
its practical depth and detail.

------
dominotw
The Selfish Gene - Dawkins

Freedom from the Known - Jiddu

For decades I've been plagued by 'what is one supposed to do in life'
question, I've been restless for years.

These two books gave me atleast a logical framework to understand my
frustrations.

------
patfla
Just one interesting point from Daniel Bell's The Coming of Post-Industrial
Society, published in 1973, was that post-industrial society would require a
vast network connecting everyone, and thing, together.

------
blakesterz
I really enjoy anything from John McPhee, especially Coming Into The Country.

~~~
scruple
I'm planning on starting The Founding Fish this evening, a recommendation from
a friend. It will be my first McPhee book and I'm very much looking forward to
it.

------
SpecialistEMT
I liked the Art of War in high school. Feel like it helped me a lot with stuff
like negotiating salary in my early years.

Later -- The Book of the Courtier by Baldassare Castiglione -- same topic as
Art of War I'd say.

------
burke
In no particular order:

• Sapiens

• Thinking Fast and Slow

• The Mind Illuminated

• A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

~~~
rickitan
Very interesting that you point to a Meditation book (The Mind Illuminated)
and a Stoic book (A Guide to the Good Life).

I've read both, and I like both philosophies. While they both share
similarities (non attachment, living in the present), it seems that in
Vipasana you wouldn't try to get rid of a bad thouhgt by using your
rationality. You would just observe it.

While Stoicism demands engaging rationality to overcome the emotion or bad
thought.

Have you thought on how to reconcile the two? This is something I've been
pondering for a while.

~~~
burke
I think early Buddhism and Stoicism can be cobbled together into a workable
philosophy, and I think Vipassana is also complementary with a number of Stoic
practices.

Like you've identified, a recurring apparent disagreement between the two
philosophies is how to relate to positive and negative phenomena: In the stoic
view, positive phenomena should be enjoyed, but we should be clearly aware
that they're impermanent so that we're not disappointed when they inevitably
end. Likewise, we should bear negative phenomena with the knowledge that we
could always be experiencing something even more negative.

In Buddhism, there's also guidance for relating to positive and negative
phenomena in a different way, but it doesn't appear to agree with the Stoics.
In Buddhist thought, we should use concentration careful attention to our
inner experience to cultivate equanimity toward both positive and negative
phenomena while growing a deep sense of inner fulfillment.

I don't think these are actually that different: in both philosophies, the end
state — whether that of a Buddhist arhat or a Stoic sage — is to be pretty
much happy with whatever's going on, and the path is essentially to become
aware of the bad in the good and the good in the bad. Really, I think the main
difference is that the Stoic philosophy is phrased and framed in a more
accessible way, but the practices complement each other well.

Concretely, imagine your dog is sick and will probably die. Stoicism tells you
to appreciate every moment you have left with your dog but to vividly imagine
your experience of him dying to lessen the blow when he does, and to prepare
yourself for (and convince yourself of!) that eventuality. Buddhism would
suggest you meditate on the mental talk, mental imagery, and emotional body
sensations associated with your experience of the trauma. These are, in my
mind, complementary ways to cultivate equanimity, and are even better used
together than separately.

------
tmaly
I really enjoyed Never Split the Difference. It has helped me with negotiation
in life.

I enjoyed 4 Hour Work Week when I first read it. I am still trying to create a
profitable side hustle.

------
combatentropy
_The Elements of Style_ by William Strunk and E. B. White

 _The Language Instinct_ by Steven Pinker

 _The Problem of Pain_ by C. S. Lewis

 _The Mac Is Not a Typewriter_ by Robin Williams

 _Getting Real_ by 37 Signals

------
cbush06
"The Innovators" by Walter Isaacson

------
yesenadam
All these had a huge impact on me. The descriptions are inadequate, I've just
tried to mention the subject matter.

Deborah Tannen, _You Just Don 't Understand_ \- how males and females talk
different languages.

Lakoff & Johnson, _Metaphors We Live By_ \- how our language and thoughts are
built from a fabric of conceptual metaphors. _Philosophy In The Flesh_ is
about the conceptual metaphors that philosophy is built from.

Jonathan Glover, _Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century_ \- WWI,
WWII and other wars, nazism, communism etc

Plutarch's _Lives_ \- biographies and stories from famous ancient Greeks and
Romans. Amazing how little's changed.

Lin Yutang, _The Importance of Understanding_ \- introduced me to ancient
Chinese philosophers. _The Importance of Living_ \- introduced me to ancient
Chinese writers, poets and the Chinese way of life.

Hofstadter, _Gödel, Escher, Bach_ \- read it when I was 14, and I was into
music, art and programming, so it blew my mind.

Susan Faludi, _STIFFED_ \- men, work, jobs, masculinity, 20th C

Walter Lippmann, _Public Opinion_ \- media, war, propaganda, democracy

Noam Chomsky's political books

E.F. Schumacher, _Small is Beautiful_ \- the world, development, government,
planning, organization, humanity, sustainability

J.R. Saul, _Voltaire 's Bastards_ \- power, history, democracy, technocracy,
reason, rationality, history from late 18th C until today.

Raymond Williams, _Culture and Society 1780-1950_ \- the anti-industrialist
tradition, politics, culture, society and the new language describing these
things

Clifford Pickover, _Computers, Patterns, Chaos, and Beauty_ \- programming,
mathematics, art, fractals, dynamical systems etc

Ben Zander, _The Art of Possibility_ \- hard to explain, kind of advanced
self-help, the magic of changing attitudes, expectations, habits.

My favourite non-fiction books of all time, though, are the essays of Emerson,
Hazlitt, RL Stevenson, GK Chesterton, Santayana, Bertrand Russell. And the
books of Nietzsche, SARK and Robert Fulghum.

------
atlas1428
\- The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins

\- Godel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter

\- Language, Truth, and Logic by A. J. Ayer

\- Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella Meadows

Books that serve as investment philosophy guides for those who've developed a
habit of saving money but are looking for the "next step" in building more
wealth. From the mind of one of the greatest investors of all time:

\- The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham (get the annotated version with
an epilogue written by Warren Buffett!)

\- The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America

A book that discusses what matters most in your life from a resource-
allocation, measurable results standpoint (family, etc.):

\- How Will You Measure Your Life by Clayton Christensen

A book I read 10 years ago that forever changed the way I manage productivity
and organization both at work and in my personal life:

\- Getting Things Done by David Allen

Books that show that our universe is just as crazy, if not crazier, than
science fiction:

\- Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy

\- Quantum Chance: Nonlocality, Teleportation and Other Quantum Marvels

\- ..and so on with intersecting topics!

Not to mention, I love trying to have as deep an understanding as I can by
reading highly technical textbooks on cosmology, gravitation, and quantum
physics.

------
Kagerjay
haven't read a ton of nonfiction, but these were good

\- Thinking fast, and slow

\- 7 habits of highly effective people

\- Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software

\- Getting Things Done

\- Choose Yourself

------
merrua
I enjoyed all these. All of them are worth a read.

Business / Tech Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. Are Your Lights
On?: How to Figure Out What the Problem Really Is. Managing Expectations:
Working with People Who Want More: Working with People Who Want More, Better,
Faster, Sooner, Now! Explore It!: Reduce Risk and Increase Confidence with
Exploratory Testing. Spam Nation: The Inside Story of Organized Cybercrime-
From Global Epidemic to Your Front Door. Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big
Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. Badass: Making Users
Awesome. Social Engineering in IT Security: Tools, Tactics, and Techniques.
How to Make Sense of Any Mess: Information Architecture for Everybody. Agile
Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great. The Black Swan: The Impact of the
Highly Improbable. The Global War for Internet Governance. Coding Freedom: The
Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking. Hate Crimes in Cyberspace. High Noon: The
Inside Story of Scott McNealy and the Rise of Sun Microsystems. Mindset: The
New Psychology of Success. Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the
Internet. The Soul of A New Machine. Hot Spots: Why Some Companies Buzz with
Energy and Innovation - And Others Don't. A Computer Called LEO: Lyons Tea
Shops and the World's First Office Computer. Power Failure: The Inside Story
of the Collapse of Enron. The Mesh: Why the Future of Business is Sharing.
What's Mine Is Yours: How Collaborative Consumption is Changing the Way We
Live. Privacy in Context: Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social
Life. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking. The
Boy Kings: A Journey into the Heart of the Social Network. The Undersea
Network (Sign, Storage, Transmission). Automating Inequality: How High-Tech
Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor. Meaningful: The Story of Ideas
That Fly. Zero Bugs and Program Faster. Official Criticism Manual: Perfecting
the Art of Giving and Receiving Criticism. Hacking Wireless Access Points:
Cracking, Tracking, and Signal Jacking. Usability Testing Essentials: Ready,
Set...Test! Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management. The Accidental
Project Manager. Building Successful Communities of Practice. Card Sorting:
Designing Usable Categories. More Fearless Change: Strategies for Making Your
Ideas Happen. Security and Usability: Designing Secure Systems that People Can
Use. Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet. The
Well: The Epic History of the First Online Community. Programmers at Work.

Science The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma
Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two
Centuries of Controversy Darwin's Ghosts: In Search of the First Evolutionists
The Dinosaur Hunters: A True Story of Scientific Rivalry and the Discovery of
the Prehistoric World Chasing Venus: The Race to Measure the Heavens The
Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Hidden Figures Prometheans in the Lab:
Chemistry and the Making of the Modern World Fixing My Gaze: A Scientist's
Journey into Seeing in Three Dimensions The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural
History Knocking On Heaven's Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking
Illuminate our Universe Sightlines An Ocean of Air: A Natural History of the
Atmosphere Snowball Earth: The Story of the Global Catastrophe That Spawned
Life as We Know it Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific
Revolution Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error: The Meaning of
Error in an Age of Certainty Mycophilia Packing for Mars: The Curious Science
Of Life In Space No Logo King of Infinite Space: Donald Coxeter, the Man Who
Saved Geometry The Ghosts Of Evolution Nonsensical Fruit, Missing Partners,
And Other Ecological Anachronisms Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA
Growing Up Boeing: The Early Jet Age Through the Eyes of a Test Pilot's
Daughter Soundings: The Story of the Remarkable Woman Who Mapped the Ocean
Floor Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 bath Toys Lost at Sea Naming Nature:
The Clash Between Instinct and Science

World / Politics / Other Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power The
New Jim Crow The Market for Force: The Consequences of Privatizing Security
Imaginary Weapons: A Journey Through the Pentagon's Scientific Underworld
Inside Scientology: The Story of America's Most Secretive Religion The
irregulars : Roald Dahl and the British spy ring in wartime Washington Holy
Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing The Gift of Fear

------
criveros
1\. The power of now

2\. Models

3\. The 4-hour workweek

~~~
Symmetry
I read Models after a good review of it[1]. It was only sort of useful for my
36 year old self but it would have been immensely useful to me at 16.

[1][https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2018/05/25/models-a-
summ...](https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2018/05/25/models-a-summary/)

------
ssvt
1984

~~~
nphadke
While I tend to agree that aspects of 1984 have been and continue to be seen
time and again in societies around the world......the work itself is fiction.
The OP asked for non-fiction books.

------
cryptozeus
Sapiens

------
joobus
The Bible

~~~
unmole
The OP specifically asked for non-fiction.

~~~
yesenadam
That's a bit snarky. Most of it was written as non-fiction. Your descendant
will be denouncing a 21st C physics book on HN as fiction in 500 years time. I
guess you haven't read, for example, Proverbs (just a load of great proverbs)
or Ecclesiastes (very dark view of life - nihilistic, sceptical, world-weary)
- they're great stuff. (disclosure: total atheist)

------
dmccunney
An assortment: "The Silent Language" by Edward T. Hall. Hall was an
anthropologist attached to the University of New Mexico. He and his research
partner, linguist Norman Trager, were doing research in comparative culture.
Hall realized they would need a comprehensive theory of culture to describe
what they were comparing and provide ways to compare them. Hall's model was
"culture as communication", and the results were presented in the book above.
His key point was that most of culture was like the iceberg - 90% of it is
processed on an unconscious reflex level. We are no more aware of most of our
culture than a fish is of the water it swims in. We only _become_ aware when
we are set down in a culture that does things differently than ours. The
Silent Language is about how we use space. The followup "The Hidden Dimension
looks into how different cultures use _time_. _Many_ things fell into place
when I read Hall.

"Games People Play" by Eric Berne. Berne was a psychiatrist and founder of the
discipline of Transactional Analysis. Games People Play was a PopSci
bestseller when first published, which was odd because it's a highly technical
volume written for other psychiatrists. His thesis was that most human
behavior could be viewed as games, and most of what we did were ways of
structuring time. Follow up with his "What Do You Say After You've Said
Hello?" and "Beyond Games and Scripts". Hall's work above did much to explain
teh behavior of societies. Berne's work does much to explain the behavior of
people _in_ societies.

"The Anatomy of Criticism" by Northrop Frye. Frye was a Professor of English
at Toronto University. He had completed a study of William Blake called
"Fearful Symmetry", and was attempting to do a study of Spencer's Faery Queen.
But he found himself trying to make sense of various terms used in literature,
and the result became a work of pure theory, unconnected with any specific
works. He refers to poetry and poetics, but his canvas is broader. Part of his
problem was that there was no general term in English for a work of prose
fiction. It's a set of four essays, covering Historical Criticism, Ethical
Criticism, Archetypal Criticism, and Rhetorical Criticism, but makes clear
that while each form is valid in its own terms, none fully described
literature, and a more synoptic view was required.

"The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Thomas S. Kuhn Kuhn's work
challenged the accepted notions of scientific progress, and the notion of
steady accumulation. His thesis was that the real progress came from notions
that lay outside accepted theories, and provided new paradigms by which
reality might be understood, and faced all the resistance transformative ideas
face from entrenched doctrine until they are demonstrated to be correct.

"Management: Tasks, Practices, Responsibilities" by Peter F. Drucker. Drucker
was our present generation's primary primary theorist and consultant on the
practice of management, and just what management was and what mangers did.
This work was probably his magnum opus, where he pulled together the ideas
he'd formulated elsewhere into a coherent whole. It's a liberal education not
only in management, but in the nature and structure of market based economies.

"The Making of Economic Society" by Robert F. Heilbroner. This is probably the
best single volume overview I'm aware of on economics and economic history,
beginning with just what an economy is, and the changing conception of
economics through history, with the transition from Traditional through
Command to Market economies and the issues involved with each. Many animated
discussions I see online about economics make me say "Those words don't mean
what you think they do. Please read Heilbroner, and come back when you have.
Then we might at least be talking about the same things."

"The Problems of Philosophy" by Bertrand Russell. Russell is concerned with
knowledge, and how we know what we know. He asks "Is there any knowledge in
the world so certin that no reasonable man could doubt it?", and concludes
that it's one of the most difficult questions that can be asked. When we
understand the obstacles in the way of a straightforward and confident answer,
we are launched on the study of philosophy, which is concerned with precisely
such questions. If philosophy is of interest, this is a superb place to start.

"Religion and the Rise of Capitalism" by R. H. Tawney. Economies don't exist
in vacuums. The are aspects of the societies in which they exist, and reflect
the values of those societies. Religion has been a critical part of the value
systems of societies for as long as there have been societies, and religious
notions on what sort of behavior is acceptable affect the structure of
economies by determining what sort of transactions are permissible. Tawney is
specifically concerned with religious thought in England affecting social
organization and economic issues in the period immediately preceding the
Reformation and the two following centuries, but while his focus in England,
his description of the way in which Christian religious doctrine changed
gradually to make a capitalist economy possible in England, the underlying
processes could be applied through Europe in general. Read this as a companion
to Max Weber's "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism", originally
written in German and concerned with the Netherlands and Germany.

"Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy" by Joseph A. Schumpeter. Schumpeter was
an Austrian economist, a contemporary of John Maynard Keynes, and (briefly)
Austria's Finance Minister in the 1920's. Like Keynes, he considered himself
influenced by Marx. But unlike many others, he believed Marx "asked all the
right questions, and got all the wrong answers". Capitalism, Socialism, and
Democracy was Schumpeter's (often delightfully snarky) attempt to understand
what Marx got wrong and why. It's a useful brainwash after you've spent any
time reading MArx or other folks who consider themselves Marxists, and
provides a needed sense of perspective.

There's more, but I have to stop somewhere...

