
Ask HN: Books with a high signal to noise ratio? - thewarrior
I like reading non fiction but a lot of it is like pop psychology with not a lot of informational content.<p>I&#x27;ve picked up two books recently and I&#x27;ve learnt a lot :<p>The Selfish Gene By Richard Dawkins<p>The 10 Day MBA By Steven Silbiger<p>There&#x27;s very little fluff in these books and you learn something useful on almost every other page. I&#x27;d like to read more such books , especially on technical subjects.
======
hackuser
There's another problem besides poor signal-to-noise, the information in
pop-(history, psychology, economics, etc.) books often is simply wrong or
deceptive. Even scholarly books can misinform you or give you a very biased
perspective; with millions (tens of millions?) of PhD's in the world, you can
find a book that will say almost anything you like.

Thankfully, the experts in each field effectively review the books for you. An
there are more widely-respected, serious scholarly works of true genius than
you can read in your lifetime. The signal-to-noise generally is very high,
misinformation is low, and writing by the very best is often very engaging.

In other words, if all you read is the very best humanity has to offer, you
still won't live long enough to read more than a fraction of it. So why waste
your time on anything else?

~~~
shadowfox
The question then is: how do you find such books especially as a layman?

~~~
hackuser
I've tried to solve that challenge a few times now. Here's what I've learned
so far, from most efficient to least:

* Ask an expert; this is a simple question for them. A university library's reference desk has worked well for me. For example, looking for books on Egypt, I contacted a university library referece desk and was connected to the library's Arabic Studies reference librarian, who had a Ph.D. in the field from an elite university. What was a challenging question for me was probably offhand knowledge for him. (Of course, respect their time (be prepared and patient) and the fact that you are not entitled to their services, but he seemed excited that a member of the public was interested and serious.)

* Look for scholarly articles reviewing publications in the field. I use Google Scholar but I get the impression JSTOR is better if you have access (I've never used it and know little about it). In each case I've read several articles to triangulate what is widely accepted and what is particular to that author, and to fill gaps in each author's coverage. However, I find the review articles themselves fascinating, almost essential background on what I want to read, and tend to get lost in them. Lacking expertise myself, I still feel uncertain about the conclusions I draw - what don't I know? what context am I missing? - there is no substitute for expertise.

* Look at class syllabi at universities. This has been slow going: I have to find the classes and the syllabi (if available), and then hope it includes more than an unannotated list of books.

* Do not: Use general web resources. It seems like the general web and the scholarly world are two separate silos of knowledge. I find 100x more valuable information in the scholarly articles, and random people on the web are often badly misinformed (this includes Amazon reviewers, a great source of complete nonsense that sounds good until you know better).

Overall, it makes me appreciate the resources available to university
students, who have free and easy access to experts in a huge variety of
fields, all paid to help them.

~~~
DenisM
Very astute, especially the library reference idea. In the same vein:

\- Avoid news brought up by social networks - people like and share what's
emotionally engaging, so the story writers have a very strong incentive to
embellish. Majority of the "news" on social media is either bogus or empty.

\- Major newspapers check credentials of their guest authors. Those guest
articles aren't always correct, but signal/noise is way higher.

\- Articles in peer-review journals are usually right, especially the bigger
journals with more eyes on them.

\- Approaching a librarian is not as hard as it may seem. Here's UW. for
example:
[http://www.lib.washington.edu/about/contact](http://www.lib.washington.edu/about/contact)

\- Apparently there's a "24/7 Reference Cooperative", a nation-wide librarian
Q&A service:
[http://wiki.questionpoint.org/w/page/13839418/24%207%20Coop%...](http://wiki.questionpoint.org/w/page/13839418/24%207%20Coop%20FAQs)

------
cjf4
I think if you're really looking to get a sense of how the world works, the
best stuff to read are journalistic accounts and histories. Just pick a
subject your interested in, do a bit of googling on well regarded accounts of
that subject, than go to town.

The reason I think these are more valuable than the pop psychology/business
airport books is they don't operate under the pretense that the world's great
truths can be boiled down to 240 pages. Rather, learning about people's
experiences and stories on there own terms helps you develop a much more
nuanced worldview.

For example, I'm reading The Battle Cry of Freedom, an overview of the Civil
War, and it's astounding how much more insight a book about something 150
years ago offers into today's society than just about any of the Gladwell
genre stuff.

~~~
efuquen
I've also been reading The Battle Cry of Freedom and it's been amazing. The
analysis and insights the author can pack into every single page is just
incredible. And all those political, social, and historical insights have just
as much applicability today. It really has been essential reading for
understanding the major fault lines that have defined American life, and
continue to do so in major ways.

~~~
cloverich
I've been (slowly) working through the series (Oxford History of the United
States) and want to put a mention in for "What Hath God Wrought", covering
1815-1848. Similar in scope and depth to Battle Cry, gave me similar feelings
of "How can a book so long feel like it's barely abel to get all this
information in."

Thats the period I was least interested in going in, but have ranked as the
best History book I've read.

------
timbuckley
"Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined" by Steven Pinker

Bill Gates calls it one of the most important books he's read in his life.
"People often ask me what is the best book I’ve read in the last year. Steven
Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined stands out
as one of the most important books I’ve read – not just this year, but ever."
[http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/The-Better-Angels-of-Our-
Nat...](http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/The-Better-Angels-of-Our-Nature)

~~~
DoctorZeus
I encourage anyone who reads Pinker's book to also consider Nassim Taleb's
critique
[http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/longpeace.pdf](http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/longpeace.pdf)

~~~
lucajona
... and then read Pinker's reply
[http://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/comments_on_taleb...](http://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/comments_on_taleb_by_s_pinker.pdf)
TLDR: The book’s structure was lost on Taleb, who blends the different
chapters and then criticizes his own confusion.

~~~
timbuckley
I'm a bit of a Pinker fanboy, but his counter-criticism of Taleb is very well-
written and hits on every point Taleb makes.

"Taleb shows no signs of having read Better Angels with the slightest
attention to its content. Instead he has merged it in his mind with claims by
various fools and knaves whom he believes he has bettered in the past. The
confusion begins with his remarkable claim that the thesis in Better Angels is
“identical” to Ben Bernanke’s theory of a moderation in the stock market.
Identical! This alone should warn readers that for all of Taleb’s prescience
about the financial crisis, accurate attribution and careful analysis of other
people’s ideas are not his strong suits."

~~~
eruditely
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1Dm2ZYeA6U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1Dm2ZYeA6U)
, "Statistics of Violence as Special Case of Fat Tails", there's been a ton of
commentary on this back and forth, but not one of them thinks "Pinker is
correct" if you've been paying attention. I need to start collecting resources
related to this.

------
danso
The best book I've read in the last 5 years is David Simon's, "Homicide: A
Year on the Killing Streets"...if you've watched The Wire, half of its
material is derived from this real life account of being embedded in
Baltimore's homicide unit:
[https://books.google.com/books/about/Homicide.html?id=N8LS0b...](https://books.google.com/books/about/Homicide.html?id=N8LS0b0_bvUC&hl=en)

All of Atul Gawande's books, notably:

The Checklist Manifesto [1]: [http://atulgawande.com/book/the-checklist-
manifesto/](http://atulgawande.com/book/the-checklist-manifesto/)

Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance:
[http://atulgawande.com/book/better/](http://atulgawande.com/book/better/)

[1] You can read the essay that this book is based on in the New Yorker:
[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/12/10/the-
checklist](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/12/10/the-checklist)

~~~
Luc
'Checklist Manifesto' is great, but I don't think it's high in SVN. It repeats
itself a lot to drive home the point that using checklists is good, even (or
especially) for experts in their field.

~~~
dominotw
yea tldr is like 5 lines.

------
hammeringtime
* Influence by Cialdini - great overview of the psychology of human motivation and influence. You'll get the inside dirt on a lot of sales and marketing tricks.

* Seeing like a State by James Scott - a good political history with lots of insight into many conventions in our modern society, such as even last names, were created to make society manageable by a central government.

* Europe and the Europeans by Barzini - the closest thing I have found to being a time traveler, skipping between different places and times in Europe from 1920 to the 1970's.

------
auntienomen
A few books at various levels with very high signal-to-noise ratio:

Feynman's little popular science book _QED: The Strange Theory of Light &
Matter_ is a gem. It's very short and non-mathematical, but still manages to
get remarkably close to the truth.

If you're more mathematically inclined (e.g., fluent in multivariate calculus)
and know a little classical physics, the first 5 chapters of Wald's _General
Relativity_ are an essentially complete introduction to the subject.

Another classic is Shannon's _A Mathematical Theory of Communication_, which
introduces the subject of information theory, and then solves basically all
the subject's main problems.

In economics, I think the record for signal to noise is probably held by
Keynes _The Econonic Consequences of the Peace_, 118 pages, in which he
basically forecasts the disastrous course of events from 1918 to 1939.

~~~
danieltillett
Some nice books on this list - Keynes’ book is certain packed with advice that
was completely ignored at the time.

------
samsolomon
On Writing Well by William Zinsser [http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-30th-
Anniversary-Edition/...](http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-30th-Anniversary-
Edition/dp/0060891548)

It's absolutely the best book for anybody who keeps a blog or writes any sort
of non-fiction. I try and re-read it once a year.

------
tomp
One of the most important books in my life has been

 _The Way of Zen_ by _Alan Watts_

(I listened to it as an audiobook). It changed the way I think and feel (or at
least how I react to feelings). Other interesting books about
philosophy/spirituality are

 _Jonathan Livingston Seagull_ by _Richard Bach_

 _Siddhartha_ by _Hermann Hesse_

 _The Power of Now_ by _Eckhart Tolle_

The last one is the least recommended, I'm not sure I got anything out of it,
but I read it in in the same period of time as the ones above, so I might have
learned something subconsciously.

~~~
wakaflockafliz
+1 for Jonathan Livingston Seagull - Fantastic book, and a very very easy read
to boot!

------
kamilner
Quantum Computing Since Democritus, by Scott Aaronson. It covers an astounding
amount of stuff -- including complexity theory, the nature of randomness and
information, and quantum information theory -- into less than 400 pages.

~~~
hellodevnull
Within computer science, I found "Introduction to the Theory of Computation"
by Sipser to cover a lot of ground in a concise and comprehensible manner.

------
jonathanleong
I generally avoid books written by Journalists, especially for technical
fields. I've been told by some Professors that a journalist will contact
various experts in a field for a given hot topic and write a book on their
notes (I assume they get compensated). The information in the book is still
useful and should be fairly well written. However if you're looking for the
high signal stuff, you're better off reading a book by someone who is actually
in the field vs an outsider. Preferably someone who is on the cutting edge of
the field. That's important to me because I'd rather read about ideas who are
active in their field vs. an outsider/generalist. (Note that I have nothing
personal against journalists. I simply view what they write as second hand
knowledge. i.e Do you think a journalist can capture the nuance and context of
a particular subject such as Evolution? I would trust Richard Dawkins to
achieve that and do a better job)

I've had pretty good success with this method. As a browse the book store, I
check the author and put down books that are written by journalists. If the
author is a researcher or a distinguished person in their field I take a
closer look at the book and check the reviews.

~~~
findjashua
igonvalue

------
kashyapc
Sapins[1] by Yuval Noah Harari. Currently 220 pages into it, I wholeheartedly
recommend -- it's remarkably well written and is full of very interesting
perspectives.

Credit where it's due: learnt about this book in an edge.org conversation[2]
between Dr. Harari and the eminent psycologist Daniel Kahneman.

Speaking of professor Kahneman, I recently finished his "Thinking, Fast and
Slow" (I did notice it's mentioned in the comments, but still), over a period
of deliberate slow reading of 5 months. Much has been said and written (more
than well deservedly!) about this book. Don't let the title invite you to
dismiss it off as yet another over-simplifying popular psyocology book; it's
anything but that. It is an account of about 30 years of collaboration with
his late colleague Amos Tversky. Certainly not a breezy page-turner. It's well
worth it to take your own time to assimilate the content.

    
    
      [1] http://www.ynharari.com/sapiens-the-book/short-overview/
      [2] http://edge.org/conversation/yuval_noah_harari-daniel_kahneman-death-is-optional

~~~
qrendel
I read _Sapiens_ after seeing the same edge.org conversation, and while it was
mostly good, I think it started off strong and then became less so as it went
on. Especially towards the end it became almost a hot list of current events
the author had read about in the newspaper, like browsing through a lot of TED
talks, without a lot of coherence to a larger picture. My other complaint
would be that some portions seemed less scholarly and heavily influenced by
the author's opinions and personal worldview. Not a bad book by any means but
somewhat less than the "history of humankind" I had hoped for. The first
quarter focusing on prehistory through agriculture was very informative,
though leaves me questioning if I'm just suffering from Gell-Mann amnesia.
Rated it 4/5 on Goodreads when I was finished.

I found _Guns, Germs and Steel_ by Jared Diamond to be perhaps a better book
of similar nature overall, and would add in _The 10,000 Year Explosion_ by
Cochran and Harpending as another good one for those who liked _Sapiens_.

------
officemonkey
"Getting to Yes" is probably the shortest, most useful book I've ever read. If
you have to negotiate anything, this book will help.

I read it 22 years ago and it pays off regularly.

~~~
mrestko
I'd second this. The core message of the book is well stated and though I read
it a few years ago now, I still regularly use the communication techniques in
every day life.

------
xherberta
Econtalk.org regularly interviews authors with recent books on a wide range of
interesting topics from food to history to human nature to health care. Each
hour-long interview serves as an overview of the book and helps me decide
which would be worth a read.

Republic Lost by Lawrence Lessig had a high density of ideas.

------
wanderingstan
Good idea. Too many these books these days read like a long-form magazine
articles (or blog posts) that have been stuffed with fluff to get to a book-
length.

~~~
StavrosK
God, yes. I still can't get over "the no asshole rule". The entire book makes
literally two points: "Don't be an asshole and don't tolerate assholes". It's
stuffed with so many factoids and fallacies to belabour those points that I'm
still mad at the author for wasting 6 hours of my day.

~~~
codinghorror
So the author was... kind of an asshole?

~~~
StavrosK
No, not at all, just terribly verbose and opportunistic, I guess.

------
myproductlaunch
"Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" by Robert Cialdini

Pretty much a must-read for anyone interested in sales, marketing, or
"persuasion". However, even if you're not in that line of work it will blow
you away. Lots of good examples and not a lot of fluff (despite what you might
think just based on the title).

------
asmithmd1
The Making of Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes, he stars with the science of the
atom as it was figured out in the late 19th century and continues through the
end of World War II

~~~
hga
While that's a tremendous book, especially in the first 300 or so pages on the
history of nuclear physics there's also a _tremendous_ amount of fluff/noise,
like paragraphs about the village where Lise Meitner and her nephew and fellow
atomic physicist Otto Frisch were doing their Christmas vacation when she was
the first to receive from her friend and former colleague Otto Hahn his
stunning radiochemistry results proving the fission of uranium.

That was just the most outrageous example, but there are plenty more. But as
far as I know it's the best book on the subject, and as "Luc" says in the
other comment right now in this subthread, he doesn't oversimplify the
science.

If you like that, for more of the same without a lot of fluff I'm finding _The
Magic Furnace_ by Marcus Chown to be wonderful, it's is a history of the
elements. How we deduced the very existence of atoms thousands of years ago,
then generally much more recently their nature, then how they came to come
about (e.g. fusion in stars). Truly fantastic and rather tightly written, the
fluff about the philosophers and scientists is generally only a sentence or
three.

If you like both of those, as I recall, haven't read it since the '80s, George
Gamow's _30 Years That Shook Physics_ ought to fill out the rest of the basic
picture, focusing more on our friends the electrons, which is where almost all
the action in chemistry happens, that's something these other two books don't
cover in as much detail as the nucleus.

~~~
Ollinson
I think a lot of what you call fluff/noise was the author's attempt to show
the humanity of scientists who some readers might misidentify as gods on
earth. I absolutely agree it can sometimes be tedious but I don't think it was
just padding to make the already 900+ page book longer.

~~~
hga
I don't think he padded the book, but I otherwise have difficultly explaining
why he included those vacation location paragraphs. They didn't humanize
Meitner and Frisch, or otherwise add to the story; yeah, they were walking in
the snow when they came to the big conclusions (and Meitner's encyclopedic
knowledge of the relevant physics facts was truly amazing), but no more than
one setting paragraph was needed, and a couple of sentences would done in this
place.

It wasn't like e.g. the Cambridge labs where so many critical experiments were
done with such simple apparatus ... which got if anything less coverage
outside of describing the experiments.

I suppose he found the story he told about the village too neat not to include
in the book, but he or his editor should have had a little more restraint,
it's pure noise. I shudder at imagining the size of the original
manuscript....

------
empthought
If history is of any interest, try Asimov's Chronology of the World, by Isaac
Asimov (duh). It's ordered chronologically, and describes in concise and fact-
rich passages what was happening during a given span of time in each region of
the world.

Asimov was also a master at nonfiction writing for laypeople. Most of his
books were nonfiction (they were easier for him to write).

------
coliveira
Everything can be considered fluff if you're familiar with the topic already.
For example, I respect Richard Dawkins and agree with his position, but if you
read two or three of his books, everything else is just "fluff". Similarly, if
you already know Calculus, every other book on Calculus will be just "fluff".
So, this basically means that you need to be reading books on topics that you
don't know. The main difference I would make here is not in terms of having
fluff or not, but if the book is well written.

~~~
snoman
Fluff is not content that you already know. It's narrative that isn't directly
relevant to the topic at hand.

~~~
alok-g
This deserves more than an upvote.

------
forgetsusername
_" There's very little fluff in these books"_

Very little fluff in a book that claims to be able to provide "40 percent of a
two-year MBA program in ten days", at a fraction of the price?

If you want no-fluff writing on technical subjects, look for a good textbook
on the subject of interest. I think people are averse to it, probably an
artifact of formal education. But if you can find a well-written, introductory
text, on any subject, I think you'll be amazed at how much you can learn from
them, while actually enjoying the experience.

~~~
thewarrior
That claim is overblown but it has a lot of useful content. You'll get what
I'm talking about if you read it. Don't think of it as a substitute MBA. Think
of it as a fun way to get a good overview of what it takes to run a business.

It's that sweet spot where it's not as dry as a textbook but not full of fluff
like some pop psychology book.

~~~
forgetsusername
> _It 's that sweet spot where it's not as dry as a textbook but not full of
> fluff like some pop psychology book._

It does look interesting, and I think I may give it a spin. That said, some of
the most valuable lessons in an MBA are technical (finance, marketing,
operations).

------
argklm

      Feynman QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter; 
      Penrose The road to reality; 
      Greene The elegant universe; 
      Greene The fabric of cosmos; 
      Greene The hidden reality; 
      Hofstadter Gödel, Escher, Bach; 
      Asimov Understanding Physics; 
      Ivanov Easy as pi; 
      Boyer a history of Mathematics; 
      Robbins What is Mathematics?; 
      Russel principia mathematica;

~~~
alok-g
From the few I have read, I certainly know this is a great list. Am adding
others to my queue. Question: Which all amongst these are NOT high on signal-
to-noise ratio, if any?

E.g., I did not find Courant/Robbins as high density, though it is a very good
book still.

------
brudgers
Even his noise is signal. He is Donald Knuth.

 _The Art of Computer Programming_.

~~~
eliben
While (probably whimsically) not what the OP meant, I will attest to the
accuracy of this recommendation - TAOCP has one of the highest SNRs I've ever
seen in a book. For its thousands of pages, this says a lot.

~~~
brudgers
The 50 years writing and editing has been about pairing the text down to what
matters. It just turns out that a lot of things matter.

------
ryanmarsh
Notes on the Synthesis of Form by Christipher Alexander is the most meaning-
dense book I've ever read. The number and quality of his footnotes serve as
proof.

[http://www.amazon.com/Notes-Synthesis-Form-Harvard-
Paperback...](http://www.amazon.com/Notes-Synthesis-Form-Harvard-
Paperbacks/dp/0674627512)

------
guelo
The best history book I've read is The Origins of Political Order. Disguised
as an academic political science book it is a sweeping history of human
civilization starting in China and going through Arab and European states. It
is chock full of intersting facts and surprising theories and implications for
today.

~~~
programnature
Definitely a must-read. Also: Why Nations Fail, and Violence and Social
Orders. People in tech would be well-served by a deeper understanding of the
systems we operate in and hope to change.

------
mildredmorgan
I love "Predictably Irrational" by Dan Ariely and "Influence" by Robert
Cialdini, both fascinating reads about how the mind works that yield useful
insights for UI design and marketing.

~~~
alok-g
Are these high signal-to-noise?

------
eitally
The Art of Eating, by MFK Fisher: [http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Eating-
Anniversary-Edition/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Eating-Anniversary-
Edition/dp/0764542613)

I love food, and I love the anthropology of food. The writing here is engaging
and entertaining, but the content is quite interesting if you are at all
curious about mid-century French cuisine from the perspective of an American
ex-pat chef.

~~~
Bud
I second this. I have read every page of MFK Fisher that I can find. I have
never regretted a single page. Not just a food writer; she possesses a poet's
eye for the human condition, and genius-level writing skills.

------
edent
Simplicity - by Edward de Bono -
[http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0141033096/ref=as_li_tl?i...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0141033096/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=0141033096&linkCode=as2&tag=shkspr-21)

It is literally one idea per page. Virtually noise free - but does demand some
thinking on behalf of the reader.

------
mckoss
A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson

~~~
aorth
I absolutely loved this one. I'm a programmer, but I love the history of the
physical sciences like chemistry, physics, geology, etc and associated things
like math. Scientists did the funniest things to find out what we know now!

------
davidjhall
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.

~~~
bko
I started reading this book and am half way through and, although I'm not
finished, I would have to disagree with you. This book is mostly pop-
psychology with overstated implications and reliance on low-stake experiments
that can not always be replicated. Also, the book glosses over actual results
by saying "the participants were more likely to x than y". How much more
likely?

A typical example of psychological discovery discussed in the book: 1\. Ask
someone to give 3 or 10 examples of when they were assertive 2\. Ask someone
to grade themselves on how assertive they are

And the study shows that people who were asked for 3 examples of how assertive
they are were more likely to grade themselves as more assertive that those who
were asked for 10 examples due to recollection bias.

I mean, I could see how this is sort of interesting but it's such low stakes.
How would anyone be able to grade themselves from 1 - 10 on how assertive they
are? What does that even mean? What implications does this have on anything?

I don't know. Psych experiments that are so glorified in the book seem to me
to be too convenient and a form of story telling, which is fine except for the
troubling implications that our cognitive biases and inefficiencies somehow
trump our free will and freedom. But then again, I have my own biases.

~~~
MichaelGG
It's supposed to be an accessible version of "Heuristics and Biases". Saying
Kahneman is pop psych... Well if you think so, then we should consider
anything in psychology to be "pop".

~~~
bko
Another issue I take with the work is the certainty in talking about the
analysis of his experiments. Phrases like "we now know..." are used often.

For instance, one experiment shows that frowning can have effects on your
disposition. As an experiment, a subject is told to hold a pencil in their
mouth in a certain way as to unknowingly produce a frown or smile and then do
some task. The difference between behaviors is then attributed to smiling or
frowning, as though the only thing going on with a pencil awkwardly in your
mouth is the smiling or frowning.

Maybe I do view all psychology in a negative way but I imagine I find it
distasteful the same way (I imagine) most people find the study of IQ
differences among races distasteful. Is this a valid field of study? I don't
know and I don't care to know because the racist overtones are so strong.

Unfortunately psychology, especially 'pop' psychology has been used to deny
people their free will and restrict freedoms.

It goes along with an overall trend of the sciences to rely more and more on
statistical methods which I find troubling.

------
tblomseth
You're probably already thinking a lot about technical systems. Donella H.
Meadows' 'THINKING IN SYSTEMS' provides a profound introduction to system
dynamics that might change your way of looking at systems in the world at
large e.g. social, economic, and political systems and how they behave over
time.

It's one of the few books I've read several times. Writing this makes me want
to read it again.

------
Bud
Gödel, Escher, Bach, by Douglas Hofstadter.

~~~
rndn
If you consider extravagance as noise, this book will have a terrible SNR. (I
think it's nonetheless worth reading. It's basically an introduction to the
theory of computation with fables and plenty of illustrating examples by
Escher and Bach (both of which have unknowingly used important concepts from
computation in their works). It is definitely much easier to read after having
attended to a theory of computation I lecture.)

~~~
jackfoxy
We have access to so much great work on the topic of computation today thanks
to the internet, and especially because of work in computer languages and
research over the last 20 years, but GEB was published in 1979. At the time it
was ground-breaking, making work that really only a handful of people knew
about and were interested in accessible to many.

------
c141charlie
Functional programming in Scala by Paul Chiusano and Rúnar Bjarnason.
Programming Erlang: Software for a Concurrent World by Joe Armstrong. Even if
you have no desire to learn Scala, Erlang, or functional programming, I still
think most people would enjoy these books. Every page of these books contain a
golden nugget.

------
jjuhl
Since you don't say specifically what topics you are interrested in I'll just
name a few of my own favorite non-fiction books that have a great signal-to-
noise ratio:

\- Computer Organization and Design, Fourth Edition: The Hardware/Software
Interface

\- Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment

\- Effective Modern C++

\- SFML Game Development

\- Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools

~~~
sanderjd
Haven't done any writing of C++ since college, and not too much reading
either, but just flew through Effective Modern C++, and found it to be a
great, information-dense, and eye-opening read. Highly recommended.

~~~
Bill_Dimm
All of the C++ books by Scott Meyers are excellent -- very clear and
insightful.

------
summerdown2
For writing fiction and simply how to use words effectively: The way to write
by Joan Moat [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Way-Write-Ted-
Hughes/dp/0140272704/](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Way-Write-Ted-
Hughes/dp/0140272704/)

For understanding computer networking, Computer networks by Andrew Tanenbaum:
[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Computer-Networks-Andrew-S-
Tanenbaum...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Computer-Networks-Andrew-S-
Tanenbaum/dp/1292024224/)

For physics (though old now), Feynman's lectures:
[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Feynman-Lectures-Physics-boxed-
set/d...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Feynman-Lectures-Physics-boxed-
set/dp/0465023827/)

~~~
sanderjd
"The Way To Write" is actually _John_ Moat. I tried to look Joan Moat up on
Goodreads, and couldn't find it.

~~~
summerdown2
oops, sorry. For some reason it isn't giving me an edit option, so thanks for
your correction.

------
riemannzeta
Great question. Reminds me of what Samuel Johnson had to say about Paradise
Lost ("great, but nobody ever wished it was longer")

My $0.02:

Andy Groves - High Output Management fits your bill

Most Seneca

Robert Frost poems (but maybe S/N is TOO high for comfortable consumption
here)

------
jhedwards
1) Biology and Knowledge by Jean Piaget

2) Ontogeny and Phylogeny by S.J. Gould

3) The Logic of Life by Francois Jacob

These books have very little fluff and will challenge you to think in new ways
about evolution, biology, and the development of human knowledge.

------
joezydeco
_Gödel, Escher, Bach_ by Douglas Hofstadter?

------
soneca
Thinking Fast and Slow - each chapter summarize several others whole books on
behavioral economics.

~~~
yhager
Seconded. This book has a very high signal-to-noise ratio.

------
yomritoyj

        In Pursuit of the Traveling Salesman: Mathematics at the Limits of Computation
    

by William J. Cook.

Combinatorial optimization is very important for many practical problems and
increase in computational power and improvement in algorithms has lead to an
immense increase in the scale of problems which can be tackled. This book
describes these developments through the lens of the travelling salesman
problem

------
walterbell
1) A2K Handbook, free online,
[http://a2knetwork.org/handbook](http://a2knetwork.org/handbook)

 _" Access to Knowledge (A2K) is the umbrella term for a movement that aims to
create more equitable public access to the products of human culture and
learning. The ultimate objective of the movement is to create a world in which
educational and cultural works are accessible to all, and in which consumers
and creators alike participate in a vibrant ecosystem of innovation and
creativity."_

2) Sci-Fi author L. Sprague de Camp's 1963 book, "The Ancient Engineers",
covers the period from early Egyptian engineering up to Galileo.
[http://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Engineers-L-Sprague-
Camp/dp/03...](http://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Engineers-L-Sprague-
Camp/dp/0345482875/)

 _“History, technology, culture, finance, and sociology intersect here. It’s
not history from the top (kings and such, which some say is dry), nor history
from the bottom (average people, which is necessarily endless and perhaps not
very revealing). It’s history from the nuts-and-bolts middle – how structures
were built, how materials were transported, how wars were fought. When you
know this sort of foundational information, everything else becomes more
real.”_

3) Paul Calter, "Squaring the Circle: Geometry in Art & Architecture",
[http://www.amazon.com/Squaring-Circle-Geometry-Art-
Architect...](http://www.amazon.com/Squaring-Circle-Geometry-Art-
Architecture/dp/0470412127/)

 _" the combination of the subject knowledge of design, architecture, art,
geometry, philospohy, music theory, and mathematics ... Calter includes the
basic lessons and explanations of a regular Geometry course in his book, but
then he interweaves an integrated classical curriculum (based on deductive
reasoning)"_

4) Georges Ifrah, "Universal History of Numbers",
[http://www.amazon.com/Universal-History-Numbers-
Prehistory-I...](http://www.amazon.com/Universal-History-Numbers-Prehistory-
Invention/dp/0471375683/)

 _" the first complete account of the invention and evolution of numbers the
world over ... Dubbed the "Indiana Jones of numbers," Georges Ifrah traveled
all over the world for ten years to uncover the little-known details of this
amazing story. From India to China, and from Egypt to Chile, Ifrah talked to
mathematicians, historians, archaeologists, and philosophers."_

------
kp25
Zero to One - Peter Thiel

The Lean Startup - Eric Ries

~~~
samsolomon
If you're into technology startups—I assume you are—Zero to One is absolutely
what you're looking for.

~~~
hga
Ah, for startups in general, you should look at _The E-Myth_ by Michael
Gerber, no matter what you're doing it'll have some essential advice, and you
should examine your business model in the light of his general thesis that you
should make your business "franchiseble". At the very least, observe the
principles of leverage, "no one ever got rich typing".

------
mindcrime
_The Four Steps to the Epiphany_ \- Steve Blank

 _Steve Jobs_ \- Walter Isaacson

 _Artificial Life_ \- Steven Levy

 _On Writing_ \- Stephen King

 _Machine Learning for Hackers_ \- Drew Conway and John Myles White

 _How Doctors Think_ \- Jerome Goopman

 _Cholesterol Clarity: What The HDL Is Wrong With My Numbers?_ \- Jimmy Moore
& Eric C. Westman

 _Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco_ \- Bryan Burrough & John
Helyar

------
HelloNurse
Mathematics books normally have an excellent signal to noise ratio. The
difficulty is finding ones that are both important and not too difficult or
specialized; textbooks are usually a good starting point.

I can recommend Feynman's lectures on physics and Bruno de Finetti's "Theory
of Probability. A Critical Introductory Treatment".

------
tim333
Not a book but Charles Munger's talk, A Lesson on Elementary, Worldly Wisdom
As It Relates To Investment Management & Business is good and I see a copy is
hosted on this very domain
[http://old.ycombinator.com/munger.html](http://old.ycombinator.com/munger.html)

------
ciokan
I really like what I'm reading now: [http://www.amazon.com/The-Singularity-Is-
Near-Transcend/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Singularity-Is-Near-
Transcend/dp/0143037889)

...but it may not be what you want (some may consider it fiction)

------
timtas
I recently read "Economics in One Lesson" by Henry Hazlitt [1], and I highly
recommend it for anyone who wants a foundational understanding of economics.
"One Lesson" is meant as a claim that the book is pure "signal." And it is.

Even more terse and incisive is the 150 year old essay that inspired Hazlitt
to write his book, Frédéric Bastiat's "What is Seen and What is Not Seen." [2]
It's uncanny how well this essay holds up today.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_in_One_Lesson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_in_One_Lesson)

[2]
[http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss1.html](http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss1.html)

------
alecco
I'm guessing you mean excluding textbooks

    
    
      The Extended Phenotype
      Your Inner Fish
      Thinking Fast and Slow
      The Information
      Chaos
      Statistics in Plain English
      Fortune's Formula
      Fooled by Randomness
      A Random Walk Down Wall St.
      How to Win Friends and Influence People

------
fsloth
As a sidenote - oh, dear again a book discussion. As if my pile of unread
books was not high enough. Already ordered a few titles from this thread - I'm
anticipating with dread and excitement if any more apparent must reads pop up.
HN literacy thread plus instant click to buy - lethal.

------
Houshalter
Now that it's finally been released, I recommend _Rationality: From AI to
Zombies_ : [https://intelligence.org/rationality-ai-
zombies/](https://intelligence.org/rationality-ai-zombies/)

~~~
Blahah
Currently reading this and while it's pretty good, there's a considerable
amount of fluff in the earlier chapters.

------
ivan_ah
Shameless self-plug about my book that covers calculus and mechanics in 300pp
flat.

No bullshit guide to math and physics:
[http://noBSgui.de/to/MATHandPHYSICS/](http://noBSgui.de/to/MATHandPHYSICS/)

~~~
sunstone
If you've included the non-standard analysis approach to calculus it could
benefit a ton of people.

~~~
hga
While I haven't examined it closely, there's a well thought of, concise, no-
fluff book on it: [http://www.amazon.com/Infinitesimal-Calculus-Dover-Books-
Mat...](http://www.amazon.com/Infinitesimal-Calculus-Dover-Books-
Mathematics/dp/0486428869)

------
xiler
Open books like the Haskell wikibook [1] tend to be concise since there's no
need to create filler content.

[1]
[https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Haskell](https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Haskell)

------
Blahah
A good option is to look for winners of science book prizes.

The Royal Society Winton Prize is excellent:
[http://www.theguardian.com/books/royal-society-science-
book-...](http://www.theguardian.com/books/royal-society-science-book-prize).

Some personal favourites:

The Incredible Unlikeliness Of Being by Alice Roberts is a wonderful book that
describes how a human being develops from conception to adulthood in minute
biological detail.

The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum
Cryptography by Simon Singh is fantastic, if a little out of date by now.

Cosmos: The Story of Cosmic Evolution, Science and Civilisation by Carl Sagan.

------
kirk21
\- Berkshire Hathaway Letters to Shareholders
[http://amzn.to/1KWptkR](http://amzn.to/1KWptkR) \- Onward: How Starbucks
Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul
[http://amzn.to/1Mcy70b](http://amzn.to/1Mcy70b) \- Diffusion of Innovations
[http://amzn.to/1Dy5ZmM](http://amzn.to/1Dy5ZmM) \- Failure Is Not an Option
[http://amzn.to/1W8U4BG](http://amzn.to/1W8U4BG)

------
myth_buster
For me it was

    
    
      Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond.
    

It blew my mind on almost every section! I loved it I suppose coz it answered
a lot of questions I'd growing up and a bit more. I've recommended it to
everyone in my family.

One critique I received was that there is repetition of ideas but I think its
because primarily humans carry past successes anf failures so most of the
changes are evolutionary to what worked previously and second this book is
akin to a thesis and every chapter is essential to building up the case.

By far the best non-fiction I've read.

~~~
__Joker
While no doubt Guns, Germs, and Steel is a good work, I will be hesitant to
subscribe to ideas it presents, carte blanche. Please see this reddit
discussion[1]

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/1rzm07/wha...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/1rzm07/what_are_some_of_the_main_anthropological/)

~~~
WA
I'm sure I find books to read in this "Ask HN" but your comment is exactly
what's the issue with it.

So the OP asks for high signal to noise ratio. There comes a recommendation,
and then I read some good discussion on Reddit on how the book is actually
kind of wrong.

This begs the question: What's "high signal to noise" anyways? Someone who has
read 10 books on a subject will find barely anything new. One who just starts
out might find "gems" on every other page.

And also: If a recommendation here in this "Ask HN" is given and then debunked
as mediocre, how sure can one be to actually find a book with high signal to
noise without reading the book?

In that sense: Thanks for your comment. In-depth discussions like the one on
Reddit is really necessary, because I, as a starter, have no clue how to
evaluate a book. Every recommendation should probably come with a lengthy
discussion about its accuracy by people who know the subject :)

~~~
__Joker
I kind of agree with you "high signal to noise" take. It is highly subjective.
Most of the times, going with populistic choice seems to be way forward.
Unfortunately we have very short time. Personally very liberal estimation of
my reading prowess, I don't think I will read more than another 500 books in
my life time.

My emphasis with my comment is to read books, ideas with healthy dose of
skepticism, rather than worshipping it as gospel.

------
skykooler
I learned quite a lot reading "Understanding Physics" by Isaac Azimov. It
covers just about every level of basic through college level physics, and
unlike textbooks it is actually readable.

~~~
hga
I do remember it being fairly good when I read some of it in high school,
although something about it failed to capture me and prompt me to read it all
the way through.

One factor of that may be because Asimov didn't really understand the
material, turns out he hit a wall when going from differential to integral
calculus (the 2nd part of introductory calculus, very basic stuff), so I now
view it with suspicion.

------
saltylicorice
How to Solve It, by Polya.

------
jdalbert
Lots of good picks added to my to-read list here.

If you can read French I recommend "Petit traité de manipulation à l'usage des
honnêtes gens". To give you an idea, the translated title would be "Little
treatise on manipulation for honest people". Unfortunately, it is only
available in French.

[http://www.amazon.fr/Petit-trait%C3%A9-manipulation-
lusage-h...](http://www.amazon.fr/Petit-trait%C3%A9-manipulation-lusage-
honn%C3%AAtes/dp/2706118857)

------
danialtz
I was lucky that during my research time I got to know Dawkin's work. And the
journey started there:

1\. "Cats' Paws and Catapults: Mechanical Worlds of Nature and People" by
Steven Vogel. If you were fascinated by the wings of birds or little waves
behind the plants in water read this. Fascinating book!

2\. "The meme machine" by Susan Blackmore. Starting off where Dawkin's book
ended.

3\. "Three steps to yes" by Gene Bedell, beside Getting to Yes already
mentioned here.

~~~
leephillips
Blackmore's book is a very clear introduction to the meme, and general
replicator, concept.

------
mattmanser
Reasons and Persons by Derek Parfit

I read this about the same time I read the Selfish Gene, had a similar effect.
It's one of the few philosophy books that I still think about today.

------
DanBC
The Art of Electronics and the accompanying student manual.

------
blfr
I recently read _Intelligence: All That Matters_ , a short (160 pages)
introduction to measuring intelligence. It covers a little history, how it's
done, why it matters. Written by a working researcher so not very fluffy, and
came out in June, not last century.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OGLKHDO](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OGLKHDO)

------
danesparza
==For electronics:

The Art of Electronics 3rd Edition (interview with the one of the authors, if
you're unconvinced:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCI3B5eT9NA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCI3B5eT9NA)
)

==For finances:

The Millionaire Next Door (filled with a lot of interesting facts and habits
from extensive research)

==For food/cooking:

Alton Brown's Gear for Your Kitchen

BakeWise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Baking

------
Dowwie
Daniel Kahneman, "Thinking, fast and slow"

------
aurora72
Why nobody mentioned Paul Graham's ANSI Common Lisp book? It 's got almost
zero "noise" and full of signals .)

------
gp7
Literary Theory: An Introduction, Terry Eagleton

~~~
mistersquid
Just to be clear, the simplest gloss on Eagleton's landmark essay (it's really
too short to be a book) is that it's a takedown of belles lettres-style
criticism.

Loosely speaking, Eagleton is best known for Marxist literary theory
(dialectical materialism).

[Edit: removed html-style tags]

------
WesternStar
Lately I've been reading about the functional artist and writer because
ultimately they do similar work to what we do. Our work is more concrete and
has definite correctness but at least for me some of the admonishments towards
Craftsmanship are good. I'm Reading Art and Fear at the moment. On Writing
Well is also good.

------
MaysonL
Try Peter Drucker's _Adventures of a Bystander_ , Jane Jacobs's Cities trilogy
(non-fiction, written over many years, classic) and Robert Cialdini's
_Influence: the Psychology of Persuasion_. Also I'll second the David Simon,
Atul Gawande, Feynman, Shannon, and Keynes recommendations.

~~~
Nicholas_C
Just bought Jane Jacob's "The Death and Life...", glad to see it on here. I'm
looking forward to it.

------
lothlorien
_Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy_ by Joseph Schumpeteer and _Small is
Beautiful_ by Schumacher are two classic, heterodox economic works. People
outside the field rarely read them, which is a shame. Both have very high S/N
ratios, and will make any reader more thoughtful about the world.

------
nerdynapster
1\. Walter Lewin's For the Love of Physics: From the End of the Rainbow to the
Edge Of Time - A Journey Through the Wonders of Physics

2\. Subroto Bagchi’s MBA At 16: A Teenager’s Guide To Business

3\. Jugaad Innovation: A frugal and flexible approach to innovation for the
21st century by Navi Radjou, Jaideep Prabhu, and Simone Ahuja

------
27182818284
* Last Call The Rise and Fall of Prohibition * The Information, a theory, a flood * The Fruit Hunters * The Third Chimpanzee

Off the top of my head were pretty information dense in the sense that I
remember walking away from them knowing a good deal more about something I
didn't previously

------
leephillips
"Technical subjects" is too broad to get started. But if you are serious about
wanting a high signal to noise ratio, you want textbooks and monographs.
Landau and Lifshitz' series on theoretical physics; Knuth's _Art of Computer
Programming_ ; that kind of thing.

------
supernikita
I enjoy certain classics, exactly for the reason that the signal to noise
ratio is high. Granted, they do not tell much about business and more about
human nature, but from Hemingway to Diderot... As an author still to be
discovered I suggest JF Powers (morte d'Urban for example)

------
volaski
"The Master Switch" by Tim Wu. It really changed the way I look at the current
tech landscape.

------
Adam_O
Here are 3 that I particularly liked in the last few years:

The Information, James Gleick

A Universe from Nothing, Lawrence Krauss

Abundance, Peter Diamandis

~~~
mckoss
I was surprised to see a recommdation for The Information. Gleick seems the
epitome of a rambling author who says almost nothing. I made it through Chaos,
but could not get through Feynman or The Information. This kind of InfoJunk is
what the OP is trying to avoid, I think.

~~~
Adam_O
Maybe you are right, it is not in the same category as The Selfish Gene.
However, I thought the parts about the early history of computing were written
very well, as someone who did not know much about it before.

I was also thinking that a non-fiction book with no fluff and no injection of
personality/flair from the author is a textbook. There are many outstanding
textbooks (like Molecular Biology of the Cell) which offer pure information,
but I think commercial non-fiction books are aimed at a more general audience.
The author needs to fluff a book up a bit to make the material approachable. I
also wonder how some non-fiction books would read if untouched by editors.

------
unril
For me it is certanly "The Beginning of Infinity" by physicist David Deutsch.
Its every chapter answers to some deep questions I had about how the world
works. Currently I re-reading it again in the 4-th time and still noticing
something new and exciting.

------
rsync
Rising Up and Rising Down: Some Thoughts on Violence, Freedom and Urgent Means

Author: William T. Vollmann

It's a _7 volume_ set, but has a one volume abridged version which is one of
the more fascinating and thought-provoking books I have ever read. I rate it
very closely to GEB.

Highly recommended.

~~~
tomp
GEB?

~~~
nandemo
Presumably, "Goedel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter.

Which, incidentally, doesn't have a particularly high "signal-to-noise ratio"
but it's one of the most interesting books I've ever read.

------
uxcn
Without going into heavily technical books, I'd recommend _The Code Book_ by
Simon Singh. There's also _Fermat 's Last Theorem_ by the same author.

On the more technical side, it's somewhat cliche but, _TAOCP_ really is
excellent.

------
qntty
If you're interested in language, I really love "Metaphors We Live By." It's
more profound than I previously thought a book about metaphors could ever be.
It starts saying interesting things on page 1.

------
seanstickle
Pretty much any of these:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_Wor...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_World)

~~~
andrepd
I don't think a mega-compilation of the Western Canon is what OP is looking
for...

~~~
hga
Eh, they certainly tend to avoid fluff, and by definition, until you get to
Marx, James, Freud you're not going to find "pop psychology"! A lot of them
are very much worth reading, I personally would recommend:

Homer and a few Greek plays

Sample a bit of the great story teller Herodotus, then read the birth of
historiography in Thucydides' _History of the Peloponnesian War_ , which by
itself is also very interesting and important (wonder why the Founder of the
US didn't like direct democracy? There are very important object lessons in
it).

Surely Plato and Aristotle deserve some attention! The contents of the
latter's _Rhetoric_ is essential for when you can't reach people with
dialectic.

Euclid's _Elements_ is still about as good as you can get for what it teaches.

Plutarch is great, but I really like that period of history. To it I would add
reading some of the earlier bits of Livy.

Read, or better yet listen to audio of a few of Geoffrey Chaucer's _Canterbury
Tales_ , out loud you can follow their Middle English.

Machiavelli's _The Prince_ is still damned good, and a landmark in talking
about politics as it is, not as how people would like it to be.

Shakespeare surely needs some attention by English speakers. Swift's _Gulliver
's Travels_ were amusing when I read them in their original, and obviously
very influential.

So, yeah, check out some of the classics.

------
stared
Daniel Dennett "Consciousness Explained" \- on how or mind words, and why many
of our intuitions / common sense knowledge about our mind is wrong (which can
be demonstrated experimentally).

------
pjungwir
\- Managing the Professional Service Firm by David Maister

\- Quantum Computing since Democritus by Scott Aaronson

\- Cryptography Engineering by Bruce Schneier et al

\- Time Management for System Administrators by Thomas Limoncelli

\- Expert C Programming by Peter van der Linden

------
fsloth
Notes on the synthesis of form by Christopher Alexander. Purports to be about
architectural theory but has actually deep things to say about systems design
and organizational learning in general.

------
s_baby
Richard Dawkins is OK. Sam Harris and Steven Pinker are more relevant.

------
Artistry121
Early Retirement Extreme by Jacob Lund Fisker. It's an introduction to systems
thinking, social organization and lifestyle design with a practical focus.

------
Puts
I think No starch press really holds up to their name. :-)

------
solomatov
Mathematics: Form and Function by Saunders McLane

------
nopinsight
Blinkist provides pretty good summaries of hundreds of books. They are using a
freemium model. (I am not involved with the company.)

~~~
minthd
3-days free trial isn't freemium.

------
mistersquid
_The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business_ (2014) by
Charles Duhigg

------
tjr
The Idea Factory, by Pepper White

------
sunstone
Both, "Consilience" by E.O. Wilson and...

"The signal and the noise" by Nate Silver

are worth look.

------
kenOfYugen
Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology by Alfred North Whitehead

------
plurinshael
The Information by James Gleick, a history of information

------
jroid
Deep Simplicity: Bringing Order to Chaos and Complexity

------
sgt101
The Road To Reality by Roger Penrose.

All (literally all) signal

------
clebio
Not sure really what you consider signal versus noise, as it depends a lot of
what your interest or experience with a particular subject is. But at any
rate:

Naturalist, Edward O. Wilson

------
pshapiro99
The Open Organization, by Jim Whitehurse

------
jayess
Reclaiming History by Vincent Bugliosi.

------
bradezone
The Will to Believe, by William James

------
hga
_The Selfish Gene_ is wonderfully tight, indeed very little noise and a whole
lot of signal.

Here's two books if you want to learn about math you might want to learn
about: _The Facts on File Dictionary on Mathematics_ by Gibson, and
_Foundations and Fundamental Concepts of Mathematics_ by Howard Eves, which
takes a historical approach, but is not a history per se. More like "this is
what the Greeks did, in this period the use of calculus was pretty loose and
look at this equation that Euler thought was right, these are the steps that
brought rigor to it" etc.

Susan Wise Bauer has been writing a series of history books solely focused on
"politics", i.e. no coverage of the arts besides occasional mentions; that can
be a very useful framework to then hang study of things like the arts off of.
Also no wild speculation like _Guns, Germs and Steel_ is filled with, if it
wasn't written down and passed down to us, it gets only brief mention. Here's
the first one: [http://www.susanwisebauer.com/books/history-of-the-
ancient-w...](http://www.susanwisebauer.com/books/history-of-the-ancient-
world/)

Samuel Eliot Morison wrote a series of book on the _History of United States
Naval Operations in World War II_ , they're focused on what happened in
detail, with charts of the movement of the ships in various battles and so on.
The TV series _Victory at Sea_ was based on them, and they're a good framework
to then hang more detailed study of the war off of:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_United_States_Naval...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_United_States_Naval_Operations_in_World_War_II)

As Wikipedians put it, _This History of U.S. Naval Operations also
intentionally avoided a certain amount of analysis, for instance deferring to
other works for the causes of the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor. The
intended audience for the work, to quote from the preface, was "the general
reader rather than the professional sailor."_

There are two very tight and short books on self-defense, Jeff Cooper
_Principles of Personal Defense_ and Massad Ayoob's _In the Gravest Extreme,
The Role of the Firearm in Personal Protection_ , "Just the facts, ma'am",
firearm centric but wonderfully focused.

ADDED: Sun Tzu's _The Art of War_ is itself very focused (the media on which
it was written strongly encourages that!), although the commentary,
traditional and what modern translators add, can wander into fluff. A lot of
it is relevant to modern non-violent life, and don't forget that "You may not
be interested in war, but war is interested in you". I recommend Samuel B.
Griffith's translation, he was a professional military officer.

------
mkempe
"The Elements of Style" by Strunk & White.

"The biological basis of teleological concepts" by Harry Binswanger.

