Ask HN: What are the most thought-provoking books that you have read? - johnhkg
======
danso
David Simon's "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets"

[http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18956.Homicide](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18956.Homicide)

I wish it were required reading in at least all journalism school curriculums.
It's a book about death and the most "exciting" part of police work but also
one that reveals the banality and politically-motivated mechanics of such a
system. I almost hesitate to call it "thought-provoking" because it, among
other things, is just a great page-turner, though astonishingly completely
non-fiction. I say "astonishingly" because Simon, according to him and the
detectives he wrote about, had pretty much free reign to write what he
wanted...there's no way such a book could be written today, as the police
tactics that Simon describe, out of context, would likely cause a lot of
outrage today.

As a bonus, reading "Homicide" will make all of the jargon in "The Wire" much
more understandable. Many of the memorable incidents in "The Wire", including
the very first scene, and scenes like the photocopier-used-as-lie-detector,
come straight from "Homicide"

~~~
cakes
That has been on my to-read list since watching "The Wire" earlier this year.
The minimal research I did into it before deciding I would (eventually) read
it was definitely that Simon was (from accounts) given a lot of freedom.

I'm glad to see it here - reminds me I should get around to actually reading
it here sometime soon.

------
jseliger
I can't choose one, but I'd cite:

* Jonathan Haidt's _The Righteous Mind_ , for explaining so much personally and culturally so concisely.

* Everything on this list: [http://jakeseliger.com/2010/03/22/influential-books-on-me-th...](http://jakeseliger.com/2010/03/22/influential-books-on-me-that-is).

* _The Lord of the Rings_ , for its combination of story, interior drama, and (underrated) political economy.

* _Blindsight_ by Peter Watts.

* _Heart of Darkness_ by Conrad, who seems more prophetic all the time.

~~~
mindcrime

        http://jakeseliger.com/2010/03/22/influential-books-on-me-that-is
    

Some good stuff there indeed. _The Game_ , _Predictably Irrational_ , _The
Mating Mind_ , and _Lord of the Rings_ stand out to me as excellent
suggestions. I'm just now starting book 12 of Jordan's Wheel of Time series,
and while I've enjoyed it so far, I'm not sure I'd cite it as "thought
provoking". Entertaining, yes, and certainly worth reading, but the series
doesn't stand out to me in that way.

------
mindcrime
I'm sure there are many, but a few that jump to mind, in no particular order,
and spanning both fiction and non-fiction:

 _The Selfish Gene_ \- Dawkins

 _A New Kind of Science_ \- Wolfram

 _The Singularity is Near_ \- Kurzweil

 _Gödel, Escher, Bach_ \- Hofstadter

 _Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies_ \- Hofstadter

 _Atlas Shrugged_ \- Rand

 _The Fountainhead_ \- Rand

 _Nineteen Eighty-Four_ \- Orwell

 _The Trouble With Physics_ \- Lee Smolin

 _Time Reborn_ \- Lee Smolin

 _Ambient Findability_ \- Peter Morville

 _Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software_ \-
Steven Johnson

 _Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age_ \- Duncan Watts

 _Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for
Business, Science, and Everyday Life_ \- Albert-laszlo Barabasi

 _Artificial Life_ \- Steven Levy

 _The Four Steps To The Epiphany_ \- Steve Blank

 _The World is Flat_ \- Thomas Friedman

not a book, but the various writings of Douglas Engelbart -
[http://www.dougengelbart.org/library/library.html](http://www.dougengelbart.org/library/library.html)

 _Glasshouse_ \- Charles Stross

 _Permutation City_ \- Greg Egan

 _Neuromancer_ \- William Gibson

 _The Shockwave Rider_ \- John Brunner

 _The Society of Mind_ \- Marvin Minsky

 _The Origin of Wealth: The Radical Remaking of Economics and What it Means
for Business and Society_ \- Eric Beinhocker

 _The Black Swan_ \- Nassim Nicholas Taleb

 _Fooled By Randomness_ \- Nassim Nicholas Taleb

~~~
sitkack
I'd skip a new kind of science, or at least buy and use it as a doorstop.
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-
listing/1579550088](http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/1579550088)

------
Udik
My two cents:

The selfish gene by Richard Dawkins - makes you look at living beings as
software, and at the world as an immense optimization algorithm.

Permutation City by Greg Egan - the perfectly rational idea that the mind is
computable is rife with apparently unsolvable paradoxes.

Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. Maths, logic, patterns, artificial
intelligence, beauty, art and self-referentiality.

~~~
mindcrime
I think we've swapped notes on a similar thread before, so we may have already
talked about this, but let me say that if you liked _Permutation City_ by
Egan, you may also like _Glasshouse_ by Charles Stross.

I also "second the motion" in regards to both _The Selfish Gene_ and *Gödel,
Escher, Bach".

~~~
Udik
> we may have already talked about this..

Not that I remember. Thank you, I took note!

------
thescribe
Two books come to mind almost immedatley one fiction, the other non-fiction.

The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges, this really shook my belief in the
meaning of ordered data.

Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter, I read
this right after I finished high-school, and it turned a math-hating young man
into a math obsessed man.

------
walterbell
_Nine Hundred Grandmothers_ , by R.A. Lafferty (out of print except for "The
Books of Sand")

 _Last and First Men_ , by Olaf Stapledon, free at
[http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2028/last-and-first-
men](http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2028/last-and-first-men)

 _Accelerando_ , by Charles Stross, free at
[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/fiction/accelera...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando.html)

 _The Doubter 's Companion_, by John Ralston Saul, [http://www.amazon.com/The-
Doubters-Companion-Dictionary-Aggr...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Doubters-
Companion-Dictionary-Aggressive/dp/0743236602)

~~~
dnr
If you've read Last and First Men, Lem wrote an review/essay of it:
[http://dpuadweb.depauw.edu/icronay_web/lem%20stapledon.html](http://dpuadweb.depauw.edu/icronay_web/lem%20stapledon.html)

(I've read the essay but not the work itself. It's quite thought-provoking
itself, like most of Lem's writing.)

~~~
walterbell
Thanks, that was a thought-provoking essay on its own merits. The book itself
is worth reading for the relentless pace of socio-techno-cultural change, best
experienced as a dramatic deluge rather than exceprts.

------
keeringplastik
"Chaos",James Gleick

Maybe not the best book for understanding chaos theory, but I have not stopped
seeing stochastic patterns and applying concepts of fractal geometry to things
I come across in life as I attempt to wrap my mind around some of the deeply
complex phenomena in the universe. Whether being enraptured by the flitting
and fluttering of a curtain in a breeze, or in observing the fundamental
structure of a trees growth and branching. The whole concept of the poincare
section completely blew my mind open, even though the math was well over my
head. The book stunned my feeble mind. Even though it has been about 15 years,
no scientifically centered book has resonated as strongly since.

As an aside: GEB has come up so often it has reminded me that it was on my
short list of books to read once upon a time, alas, before the internet stole
my time.

------
throwaway420
_Democracy: The God That Failed_ by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

------
stonetomb
"The Law" by Frédéric Bastiat
([http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html](http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html) or
various PDFs floating around the web)

Times change, people do not

------
NumberCruncher
A tudatállapotok szivárványa by Andrew Feldmar

How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World by Harry Browne

A Guide To The Good Life: The Ancient Art Of Stoic Joy by William B. Irvine

------
olau
My field is CS. Clearly undergraduate-level biology books. For instance, try a
book on zoology. The multicellular organism is amazing. Think of yourself - a
big blob of cooperating cells, each a little complex wonder in itself,
originating from just a single self-organizing/self-building cell. And it has
all evolved by itself!

------
rayalez
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky

These are the most intelligent and well written books I've ever read. Authors
are amazing at thinking clearly, and expressing their ideas. Stories are
fantastic, and the author's philosophies are amazing and mind-expanding.

------
zafka
Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance Godel Escher Bach Time enough for
love - Heinlein Illusions -Richard Bach A wrinkle in time Stranger from the
depths Sidartha and all the other books by Hess Zen MInd Beginners mind MOre
to come

Books by Bradbury Books by asimov

Just starting Antifragile and it might make the list

------
Chefkoochooloo
I really liked reading "How to Build a Billion Dollar App: Discover the
secrets of the most successful entrepreneurs of our time" and we followed all
of the suggestions while building our app.

------
codemonkeymike
These two books are must reads for sure (Or must listens, both are well
narrated in audio book form)

* The One Thing By Gary Keller and Jay Papasan

* Soft Skills By John Sonmez

------
nyc_cyn
_Principles of Mathematical Analysis_ by Walter Rudin

------
boniface316
The training of O....do no read it!

------
arnold_palmur
_Cosmos_ by Carl Sagan

------
allard
arcology : city in the image of man

------
kapauldo
Big Bang, Simon Singh The Trial, Franz Kafka

Probably the best non fiction and fiction books I've ever read.

