
Ask HN: What are some good (fiction/non-fiction) books about human progress? - karimdag
Everything is said in the title, however if you&#x27;d please include <i>why</i> you have chosen that (those?) book it would be a really nice addition!
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matt4077
The most ambitious book in that regard must be Guns, Germs, and Steel
([http://amzn.to/2jKq9ku](http://amzn.to/2jKq9ku)) by Jared Diamond. It aims
to answer the question: "Why did Europeans end up killing/conquering/...
American Indians, and not the other way around?

You'll find lots of people saying Diamond has been "debunked" but by that they
mean "here's some criticism someone posted online". It's a remarkable work of
analysis tracing the causes of human progress over thousands of years.

~~~
DrScump
A differing opinion would be that he identified correlations. Both guns and
steel stem from _discoveries and inventions_ (e.g. gunpowder and smelting),
not from physical resources unique to Europe.

~~~
matt4077
It goes much deeper than that. He'd next ask: where do discovery and invention
come from?

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hacknat
Reading Fukuyama's "The Origins of Political Order" and part 2, "Political
Order and Political Decay" is a really good sweep on political progress where
it comes from and whether or not it's inevitable (hint: it's not).

Fukuyama is a real realist. What I mean by that is that he doesn't deny that
progress has occurred (something some people believe), but he points out how
precarious that progress is and that it can go away (something some people
deny).

I don't understand why it's a controversial statement to say that progress
isn't inevitable and that decay can sometimes happen, but for some reason it
is. I think his books, among many other things, are useful for grasping that
progress takes hard work and can, like anything in this world, be ruined by
laziness, corruption, or simple accidental misfortune.

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shim2k
"Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Harari. Pretty much a review
of all human history.

~~~
ess3
I second that big time. It also has a promising follow-up which I have yet to
dig in to "Homo Deus"

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DrScump
Pretty much everything by James Burke, including the _Connections_ series and
_The Day the Universe Changed_.

Both were turned into TV miniseries by the BBC (plus a successor to
_Connections_ that I haven't seen).

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Philomath
So far most comments are non-fiction, so I'll add a couple of fiction books.

I'd like to add the fiction Foundation series, by Isaac Asimov. Although they
began being published in 1942 and Asimov got some technology wrong, it's a
must read.

Also work by Stanislaw Lem. My favourite one is The star diaries, and it mixes
pure sci-fi plot with a lot of philosophic thoughts about the future of human
progress.

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unlikelymordant
bill bryson, a short history of nearly everything. It is basically a history
of what we know and how we came to know it i.e. what experiments were
performed, what led to other things etc. Really well written.

~~~
deepfriedbits
Really love Bryson's writing style. He manages to convey a lot of information
in a way that makes it easy to consume. Great rec.

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psiclops
Siddhartha by Herman Hesse

One man's journey towards enlightenment, learning, experiencing, and
progressing through life the entire way.

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oli5679
The box is a really interesting history of the shipping container. It's looks
at the intersection between the technological, political and business aspects
of the struggle to introduce a more efficient but highly disruptive
technology. It changed the way I think about driverless cars.

[https://www.amazon.co.uk/Box-Shipping-Container-Smaller-
Econ...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Box-Shipping-Container-Smaller-
Economy/dp/0691136408)

------
SFJulie
Why read a book when you have a live experimentation?

Amish are not my cup of tea, but they are an interesting bunch.

[http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2013/09/02/217...](http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2013/09/02/217287028/amish-
community-not-anti-technology-just-more-thoughful)

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mjklin
Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800
B.C. to 1950 by Charles Murray. The author did statistical analysis to find
the most influential figures in each field of endeavour, from philosophy to
music.

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shivaodin
The Ascent of Man: A Personal View, by Jacob Bronowski should be on any list
about Human Progress, especially technological progress. The book is about the
progress, pitfalls and misgivings of technological progress.

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maneesh
Sapiens is amazing

~~~
wanderingstan
Seconding Sapiens. It's my favorite read of 2016 and takes an even broader
look than Guns, Germs,& Steel. And although the author is a historian, he
speaks cogently about the role of technology.

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jaclaz
I would recommend:

The Measure of the World by Denis Guedj

There is an excerpt here:

[http://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/310302.html](http://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/310302.html)

The matter is interesting and IMHO very well told, as besides describing the
peregrinations of the scientists it gives an insight into the period, the
science revolution and Enlightenment.

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aaronhoffman
Deirdre McCloskey has a series of books on "The Bourgeois Era". Here's an
example of what they cover "1% of history, 99% of wealth"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0nsKBx77EQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0nsKBx77EQ)

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Dowwie
"The Gun" by C.J. Chivers is about the history of the AK47 and how it changed
war. The AK remains an affordable, durable piece of technology that anyone
could use, and effectively do so with minimal training, while in the process
disrupting structures of power.

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bsenftner
You'd have to read the body of his work, but Mark Twain's self conversation
(the theme present in all his writings) is criticism of the conceited concept
of human progress.

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nicostouch
Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

One of the most enlightening reads out there. Read both Why Nations Fail and
Guns, Germs and Steel.

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emrgx
The Information by James Gleick.

It is a good read on how information has changed humanity and is still doing
so.

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ue_
Books by Eric Hobsbawm and perhaps even Marx and related figures like
Proudhon. They are from a European point of view, though.

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brad0
Science fiction: Seven Eves

It's what happens with the human race if the moon crashes into the Earth.

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unixhero
Rendezvousous with Rama

Global Shift

