
What is the book that has completely changed your way of thinking? - KishoreKumar
Someone suggested me "How to win friends &#38; Infuence people". I read it 4 times in past 3 months. And I'll keep reading it through out my life. It has completely changed the way I see things. Now before I speak I think and I  can understand how many mistakes I've been doing. It had a lot of impact on me. Like wise, are there any other books? Which book had such an impact on your way of looking at things?
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snikolov
_The Design of Everyday Things_ by Donald Norman. It talks about good and bad
design in everyday objects through lots of enlightening and amusing stories
and examples (doors that look like you should push them but you actually have
to pull, mixing boards with dozens of identical knobs, aircraft software that
hides important state information, etc). It provides some interesting insights
from cognitive science and psychology too. It definitely made me a lot more
conscious of how I went about making things that people would use and how
those things could effectively communicate through their design what should be
done with them. This also had an impact into how I went about communicating in
general.

[http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-
Norman/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-
Norman/dp/0385267746)

~~~
pkamb
Without a doubt. The big takeaway from the book is that when you encounter
something that's hard to use, it's not your fault for not knowing how to use
it. It's the thing's fault for being badly designed. Read this book.

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JacobAldridge
_Rich Dad, Poor Dad_ opened my eyes to some commercial realities of the world.
I realised the career I was training for wasn't going to give me the life I
wanted, so I began focusing more time learning about money, investements,
business etc.

 _7 Habits of Highly Effective People_ is a book I've never been able to get
more than 1/3 of the way through, but its 'Circle of Control' framework made
me a much happier and more content person.

I enjoyed Dale Carnegie, but took some of the lessons on board a little too
much, which got me into trouble in some social situations where I didn't have
awareness (eg, using mirroring or copying techniques to build rapport, and
later discovering I was standing next to my girlfriend and flirting with other
women!).

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atgm
Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand), In Memory Yet Green/In Joy Still Felt (Isaac
Asimov), The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (Robert Heinlein).

Those books are probably what made me into a self-sufficient human being who
wants to stand on his own and keep living the best he can.

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mindcrime
I can think of a handful of books that have had a major impact on me. Off the
top of my head:

 _Nineteen Eighty-Four_ \- George Orwell

 _Fahrenheit 451_ \- Ray Bradbury

 _The Game_ \- Neil Strauss

 _The Fountainhead_ \- Ayn Rand

 _Atlas Shrugged_ \- Ayn Rand

 _Four Steps to the Epiphany_ \- Steve Blank

 _Business @ The Speed of Thought_ \- Bill Gates

 _The Art of the Start_ \- Guy Kawasaki

~~~
atgm
The Game is an interesting book for a lot of reasons; I don't agree with the
idea of picking up tons of random women or some of the methodology he
espouses, but it's a powerful book for making people sit up and realize that
yes, you can change your life, and yes, you have the tools to do it. It says
that "Hey, people think in certain ways and you can hack that," which may be
the first time a lot of people encounter any kind of social engineering.

~~~
mindcrime
Yeah, I'm not trying to be a big-time PUA or anything either. But as a guy who
was the stereotypical geek in at least one regard - being horrible at meeting
and interacting with women - I've learned a ton since reading _The Game_ and
joining some of the PUA forums and reading some of their material.

I've gotten more dates and had more success in the past year and a half than I
probably had in my life up to that point.

Truth be told though, I think it's as much "magic sword" syndrome as anything.
I big part of being successful with women is confidence, as we've all been
told. Unfortunately you can't just tell somebody "go out and be confident with
women" if they're not confident with women! But you can say "Here, here's this
opener and some routines and some theories about attraction, and if you use
this stuff you'll be successful" which gives them a certain form of
confidence, which leads to some success, which leads to more confidence, etc.
I look at it as way to kick off a positive feedback loop. Sorta like giving a
young knight a "magic sword" to give him the confidence to go out and slay
dragons.

Whether there's really much to the actual theories and what-not is debatable,
but I have no doubt that dabbling in the PUA world has improved my life. And
_The Game_ was my "gateway drug" into that world, so it was definitely an
influential book to me.

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brianwillis
_On Intelligence_ By Jeff Hawkins.

[http://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Jeff-
Hawkins/dp/080507853...](http://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Jeff-
Hawkins/dp/0805078533/)

Hawkins was the founder of both Palm and Handspring, but comes from an
academic background where he studied neuropsychology (how the brain works).
The book is a thorough look at how the brain experiences the world, with the
goal being the creation of artificially intelligent machines.

It'll change the way you perceive perception (if that makes any sense).

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dwwoelfel
_Learned Optimism_ by Martin Seligman, while not the most influential book
I've read, affects my thinking on a daily basis. Whenever something bad
happens to me or I come across a mental block, I use a few techniques from the
book to keep it from affecting me.

Keep in mind, my definition of "bad" is pretty loose. For example, one of the
bad events I encounter on a regular basis is being stumped by a difficult math
problem. If I were to allow myself to fall into a pessimistic line of
thinking, it would make solving problems that much harder in the future.

Seligman found that pessimistic people learn to be helpless and that once they
do, they stop believing in their ability to change things. For example, a
certain subset of subjects who were given a series of unsolvable problems were
unable to solve simple anagrams afterward. These people, according to the
theory, learned to be helpless. However, there was a subset of people who were
able to solve the anagrams. These were the people, according to the theory,
who had developed the ability to remain optimistic in spite of misfortune.

Amazon link to the book: <http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/1400078393/>

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jacquesm
I've never read a book, no matter how weird or even badly written that didn't
have a bit in it somewhere that stuck. There is gold to be found just about
everywhere. A _single_ book that has changed your way of thinking, and I would
assume that you meant 'in a positive way'?

For me if I had to point at a single book it would have to be Bill Bryson, A
short history of nearly everything.

It shows besides being a very compact overview of how we got where we are
today how often we repeat our mistakes and how easy it would be to make this
world a _much_ better place than it is today and which forces are holding that
back. It changed maybe not my way of thinking but definitely my view of the
world in a way that changed how I lie my life. I used to be an idealist
thinking that we could achieve some lofty goal of human accomplishment during
my lifetime (for instance, an end to wars of commerce) but now I realize that
we may not realize that goal ever.

So, effectively this book freed me from fighting windmills and freed my
resources to try to improve the lives of those directly around me instead of
on a larger scale. The effects have been pretty dramatic.

~~~
fylox
I completely agree. One of those books which was in some passages extremely
hard (or even painful) to read is "Thou shall prosper" from Daniel Lipman, a
(right wing) Rabbi! It changed the way I look at business. Some arguments
convinced me, others I still can't accept. But it showed me that axioms which
seem counter-intuitive to me can build a very practical world view.

Another book which is rather on the extreme side is Eckart Tolle's "The Power
of now!". Again, I sometimes couldn't stand his opinion. For example whenever
he quotes Jesus and explains that most people get it wrong but in fact it
would be like this or that.

But the book showed me that I was worrying and thinking way too much and that
this is at best useless and sometimes even dangerous.

Often books don't even tell you something new. And I think even this is
worthwhile as long as the author explains what you already know in a very
different way.

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pasbesoin
Heinlein: He presents a characterization (or characterizations), but some of
his core points soak in over time, as one gains one's own life experience.

Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance": For letting me know I
was/am not alone (even in my alone-ness).

Upon reflection, I guess these books haven't _changed_ my way of thinking. But
they've influenced them. Perhaps Heinlein helped me to change from approaching
the world as it was presented to me to approaching it as I actually saw and
see it. Pirsig helped me recognize and... formalize[1], at least for myself,
some of my thoughts on quality.

Emily Dickinson: Less really can be more. So much more.

\--

EDIT: Re [1], perhaps "explore" would be a better word.

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ajushi
Four Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferris. My life was never the same again.

~~~
chipocabra
Care to elaborate? I read it too and it really inspired my but I just can't
seem to pull off a successful muse.

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sedachv
Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus. It changed the way I think about sanity
and insanity, my model of the mind and motivational forces, the "big-picture"
view of economics, how government works, how psychiatry works, and the way
media affects us.

IMO it's treatment of desire (from a negative (lack) to a positive (thought
production machine); relationship of desired object to its platonic object
desire; how desire is generated) is a great framework for advertising and
product development.

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tstyle
The Game - I never became a PUA per say, but it helped me a lot in dealing
with co-workers, team members, investors, customers, and random people I come
across every day.

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mycroftiv
"Gödel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter. It taught me a lot about thinking
about not just patterns, but metapatterns and metametapatterns.

"The Emperor's New Mind" by Roger Penrose. A truly brilliant and eminent
mathematician/physicist boldly stepping up to grapple with the profound
challenge of understanding how math, mind, and physics intertwine. Penrose's
commentary on the role of entropy in cosmology transformed how I understand
reality.

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subhashp
Few of them are: \- I am OK you are OK, Thomas Harris (not sure) \- Fountain
Head, Ayn Rand \- How to win friends .. \- Lateral Thinking, Bono

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raghav305
Vedanta books - so many good authors all saying the same thing

Art of Happiness - Dalai Lama

Jonathan Livingston Seagull - Richard Bach

Physics problems - Irodov

Seven Mysteries of Life - Guy Murchie

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imkevingao
The Facebook Effect

It's real, it's true, it's my version of Cinderella story. I've read many
motivational books, they're good, but Facebook Effect conveyed the idea of
possibility to me, and I love it.

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yycom
_Change your thinking_ by Sarah Edelman

<http://shop.abc.net.au/browse/product.asp?productid=162469>

No, seriously.

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maxharris
_Atlas Shrugged_ , _The Fountainhead_ , and _Introduction to Objectivist
Epistemology_ , by Ayn Rand.

To a lesser extent, _The Double Helix_ , by James D. Watson.

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kthodla
The Biology of Belief by Bruce H. Lipton The Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand The
Attractor Factor by Joe Vitale The Magic of Thinking Big by David J. Schwartz

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rfugger
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

The Fountainhead

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

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keiferski
Thus Spoke Zarathustra

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Tim1776
"Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology" by Ayn Rand

~~~
Tim1776
Other books that influence how I build software:

"The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts" by Harry Binswanger, "The
Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand, "The Autobiography of an Idea" by Louis H.
Sullivan, "Reason and Analysis" by Brand Blanshard

~~~
Tim1776
My favorite science fiction story is "The Tactics of Mistake" by Gordon R.
Dickson.

~~~
Tim1776
A few great biographies: "The Man Behind The Microchip" by Leslie Berlin,
"iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-
Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It" by Steve Wozniak and Gina Smith, and
"Just One More Thing" by Peter Falk.

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sharadgopal
Demian - Hesse

Narcissus and Goldmund - Hesse

Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl

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marilyn
Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich

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daliusd
The Pragmatic Programmer

