
Ask HN: Which book helped you understand the world? - manx
I just finished Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari and was mind-blown. What else do you recommend?
======
m0th87
Understanding Power by Chomsky had a big impact on me. I read it after this
compelling blog post by Aaron Swartz (RIP):
[http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/epiphany](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/epiphany)

------
tjalfi
Here are two books that explain a lot about politics.

The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics by
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith

Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World - Tim
Marshall

~~~
credit_guy
I'll second "The Dictator's Handbook". And if anyone is thinking, "I don't
need this, I don't have any plans to become a dictator", you're thinking just
like I was thinking a few years ago. When finally I read it, I kicked myself
for passing on such a great book because of its silly name. This book does
indeed change the way you understand the world (Small caveat: the authors
stretch their theory to cover some cases such as corporate governance. That
part felt quite weak to me. You can just ignore it. The rest of the book more
than makes up for this).

And here's another one that's somewhat similar: "Coup d'Etat: A Practical
Handbook". The title is not just a joke, unfortunately. Some coups were indeed
carried out following the advice in this book (which was obviously not the
author's intention, but life sometimes takes unexpected turns). The second
edition of this book was published in 2015, just one year before the attempted
coup in Turkey. Armed with the knowledge from this book, you can go and
analyze what happened in Turkey and it's going to make a lot of sense.

~~~
blaser-waffle
I'll 3rd the Dictator's Handbook.

Also the 48 Laws of Power. Once you start seeing things through that lens, the
world looks like both a darker, meaner, but at times surprisingly nicer,
place.

~~~
heymijo
I put off reading the 48 Laws of Power for a long time for reasons similar to
OP.

Probably should have read it sooner but at least I had plenty of experience to
compare against it when I finally did suck it up and read it.

I will add Dictator's Handbook to my queue and raise my hand and 4th the 48
Laws of Power

------
maxiepoo
_The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York_ by Robert Caro.
Enormous and incredibly informative about politics, city planning and public
relations.

~~~
voisin
I read this too, and perhaps this isn’t a popular opinion given how people
revere this book, but I found it to be 5x longer than it needed to be for the
average reader not immersed in NYC from that period. The number of meetings
and characters introduced felt unnecessary. I get that he is a historian
trying to recreate the record of what happened and did so masterfully, but for
the vast majority of readers I think it would be improved to have a “digest”
version.

~~~
dang
It was much longer and Caro had to cut tons of material, including,
infamously, his chapter on Jane Jacobs. That led people to constantly ask him
why she isn't in the book. "Every time I’m asked about that, I have this sick
feeling."

[https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/01/16/studies-in-power-
an...](https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/01/16/studies-in-power-an-interview-
with-robert-caro/)

 _At the time, I asked, “Can’t we do it in two volumes?” Bob Gottlieb
answered, “I might get people interested in Robert Moses once. I could never
get them interested in him twice.”_

------
wenc
I feel we're going to get a barrage of comments....

I was wondering if folks could also mention--in 1-sentence--what they learned
from each book. Why was the book helpful in understanding the world?

I think this would make comments more interesting.

------
voisin
Night by Eli Wiesel and Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl.

Stories of how and why some people survived Auschwitz and found meaning
despite their context, from two very different perspectives (a child and a
psychologist).

------
soco
"The Naked Ape: A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal" by Desmond Morris.
Some stuff might be outdated but it definitely helped build a healthy dose of
skepticism towards fellow humans - and towards myself. You definitely need
that kind of skepticism and keeping your expectations low if you want to
survive in an enterprise environment.

------
jdiez17
Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are
Better Than You Think - Hans Rosling

~~~
senectus1
oh man, I love Hans Rosling TED videos... will have to look taht book up.

~~~
amelius
I'd love to hear his opinion on how we're handling Covid19. Rip.

~~~
zvr
His son, Ola Rosling, who continues work on their Gapminder Foundation, was
interviewed by Tim Harford on BBC's More or Less:
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct0pxk](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct0pxk)

------
gas9S9zw3P9c
I enjoyed Fooled By Randomness. Taleb's other books are good too, but Fooled
By Randomness was my favorite.

~~~
omosubi
I haven't read any others but anti-fragility is the book that has made me
think more than any other I've read in the past few years. If you can get past
the childish name calling it's worth it - I'll have to read his others next

------
bzudo
A People’s History of the United States. It opened my eyes to a past I didn’t
know existed, which helps me understand the present.

------
seneca
I have nearly as many answers to this questions as books I have read. Even
fiction helps you to understand another perspective, which I think is really
one of the great things about reading.

One of the earliest books that gave me a good leap in understanding is the Tao
of Pooh. As a preteen, it was my first real taste of philosophy outside of
Christianity, and it was something radically different.

As far as impact, probably Epictetus' Enchiridion. It's literally a manual on
how to live a good life. It's uncommonly practical advice and started a love
for his school of philosophy that still hasn't faded.

------
BJBBB
This is going to be different, and is not intended to be sarcastic.

The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula Le Guin First read during my high school years
in the Amazing SF magazine; and was later published as a book. The work was
criticized by the 'elite' of the SF community at the time. Have recently re-
read and got the same impressions of how as both a species and as individuals
we are fools that understand very little; that is, we are too stupid to know
that we are stupid.

Calvin and Hobbs by Bill Waterson. Was my favorite non-mandatory read during
my college years. Calvin Ball can teach us much about life, and his snow-men
art is the dark that we always be in all of humans.

Marine Corps Reference Publication (MCRP) 3 Rifle Marksmanship. [this is the
current version, but am not certain of the designation for this manual when I
first read it during the late 1970s]. This summarized the philosophy of
combat, the physics of interior and exterior ballistics, and describes the
zen-like state of the marksman. It is not as sterile as the US Army
marksmanship manual, is more complete treatise of combat shooting and weapons
care, and is brutally honest in that the USMC is preparing you to efficiently
kill other humans. Very sobering.

~~~
blaser-waffle
> Marine Corps Reference Publication (MCRP) 3 Rifle Marksmanship

Not nearly as sobering, but I found the MCDP series on USMC doctrine fairly
enlightening. Friction, Centers of Gravity, and a heavy importance on
Logistics have been concepts that served me well in IT and project mgmt.

~~~
gmays
You might specifically mean Warfighting, MCDP 1. That's the first book we read
as new Lts. and has stuck with me over a decade later and served me well in
tech.

~~~
blaser-waffle
There were 6 MCDP handbooks -- I helped edit a re-release of #6 as a policy
intern/college student after getting out of the USMC.

See also: [https://grc-usmcu.libguides.com/research-topics/main/usmc-
do...](https://grc-usmcu.libguides.com/research-topics/main/usmc-doctrine)

But I agree with parent's point -- MDCP #1 Warfighting is pretty good. If
you're a military nerd all 6 are great, but if you're just going read one of
them then definitely stick to Warfighting.

------
tmaly
Thinking Fast and Slow - it helped me to understand cognitive biases. I think
understanding these really helped to see what our lens does to how we see the
world.

------
iguanayou
I'm reading Sapiens right now. I wouldn't say "mind blown" as I was at least a
little familiar with a lot of it before, but the way that Harari writes really
makes you think about things differently.

Here are a couple of other books that have been pretty influential for me:

Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government

"Main Street" by Sinclair Lewis

------
sigwinch28
_The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine_ \- Michael Lewis

An entertaining read about just how fragile and naive western financial
systems can be.

 _Stories of the Law and How It 's Broken_ \- The Secret Barrister

Gives a (mostly anecdotal) insight about how broken the English legal system
is. I had to pause several times while reading because it conflicted so much
with my world view.

~~~
randtrain34
The Chickenshit Club by Jesse Eisinger is a great teardown of gov vs
corporations legal action

------
StClaire
Two books about economic development that I love:

 _Why Nations Fail_ by Acemoglu and Robinson

 _Poor Economics_ by Banerjee and Duflo

The first deals with why nations stay poor, the second covers how the poor in
the third world live and how to actually help them

------
carterklein13
Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond.

~~~
tootie
FYI that book is very poorly regarded by mainstream historians and
anthropologists for being scientifically inaccurate.

~~~
itsoktocry
> _FYI that book is very poorly regarded by mainstream historians and
> anthropologists for being scientifically inaccurate._

That's a bit of a stretch. It isn't without (legitimate) criticism --as any
work of this scope is-- but Diamond _is_ mainstream, and the book has won
several scientific awards and a lot of praise.

The over-arching premise, that luck and circumstance played a huge role in the
development of civilizations, isn't really disputed. And there are lessons in
there for today: not everything you've earned is a product of your abilities.

------
schnevets
The Design of Everyday Things

Ways of Seeing

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

------
jnsaff2
The Origins of Political Order: From prehuman times to the French Revolution
by Francis Fukuyama

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origins_of_Political_Ord...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origins_of_Political_Order)

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York By Robert Caro

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_Broker](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_Broker)

~~~
me_me_me
I would add the 'Political Decay' as a must after 'Political Order'.

IMHO 'Decay' its more important as it digs into current trends (i.e.
mechanisms of undermining institutions).

------
q-base
Debt: The first 5000 years

And then I have not yet read it myself, although I have it on the shelf, but
others recommended it for the exact same question as yours:

Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky

------
PascLeRasc
I'm working on it now, but Behave by Robert Sapolsky has been fantastic so
far. All about evolutionary biology and how it influences behavior/psychology.

------
walterbell
_Last and First Men_ by Olaf Stapledon, 1930 (free online text),
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_and_First_Men](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_and_First_Men)

 _> A work of unprecedented scale in the genre, it describes the history of
humanity from the present onwards across two billion years and eighteen
distinct human species, of which our own is the first._

------
ageitgey
At Home by Bill Bryson

This is not a Sapiens-style retelling of the history of mankind. It's light
reading - a quaint look at the history of the modern house, room-by-room, with
many diversions into whatever topic that takes the author. But it ends up
touching on a lot of interesting interconnections of how the western world
developed.

It's a great read to escape the oppressive grind of 2020 while still learning
tons of interesting things on every page.

~~~
joshvm
> This is not a Sapiens-style retelling of the history of mankind.

Although he did write that one as well! _A Short History of Nearly Everything_

------
ARandomerDude
_The Epistle to the Romans_ and _Proverbs_ were game-changers for how I
understand the world around me, and why people do what they do.

------
jakozaur
Forward looking:

Disunited Nations: The Scramble for Power in an Ungoverned World

Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist

AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

Historical:

The Birth of Plenty: How the Prosperity of the Modern World was Created

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

General:

Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That
Shape Our Decisions

The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook

------
sdedovic
_Anna Karenina_ \- I'm an eastern european raised in the US. It was really eye
opening.

 _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_

------
lequanghai
Try "Sapiens: A brief history of human kind". It teaches you about human
history and more important, how we get there. Sometimes the author gets smart,
seems like he doesn't believe in anything and human are bad for this planet.
But it's worth it. Bill Gates recommended the book too.

------
muzani
Tribe, by Sebastian Junger. It covers a journalist's experience in a war zone,
and how it changed his model of society. Man was meant to live in tribes,
where individuals are most fulfilled giving their last bit of food, rather
than a society where people grab what they can for themselves.

------
notoriousarun
The First and Last Freedom By J. Krishnamurti

------
omreaderhn
_Fooled by Randomness_ \- Nassim Taleb

 _Letters from a Stoic_ \- Seneca

The Bible

 _Beyond Good and Evil_ \- Nietzsche

 _Psychological Types_ \- Carl Jung

------
csours
The Field Guide to Understanding 'Human Error' \- Sidney Dekker

He hes a short review of his book on YouTube in 5 parts:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw3SwEXc3PU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw3SwEXc3PU)

------
sambroner
Metaphors We Live By - George Lakoff, Mark Johnson

It's a linguistics focused book that suggests people use metaphor to
understand abstract constructs. It also helped me understand people,
conversation, and intent in an especially eye opening way.

~~~
sradman
Interesting. _Metaphors We Live By_ is near the top of my list of theories
that were once a popular mainstream meme that dramatically crashed and burned
when applied in the real world. The Democratic Party's embrace of _Don 't
Think of an Elephant_ did not go well. My memory might be flawed, it usually
is.

~~~
sambroner
I'm not old enough to have been aware of the rise and fall of the mainstream
movement, very interesting! I am possibly just finding the first look into the
theory as tantalizing as everyone else did.

~~~
sradman
Excellent. If I remember correctly, the linguists sorted into two opposing
camps, Lakoff/Johnson on one side, Pinker/Chomsky on the other.

The Pinker argument is that the metaphor aspect is only important during the
short period of time when we are first introduced to a new term. Once the term
enters our vocabulary, it takes its own unique slot in our minds that is
independent of the word origins. Our minds do not have trouble distinguishing
between cordless, cellular, and wireless phones once the terms are familiar to
us. I'm sure you can find much greater insight than I can provide with a few
web searches.

~~~
sambroner
Thank you. That's a great intro.

------
JacobDotVI
The Things They Carried by O’Brian - it’s ostensibly a war book but is nothing
about war. It’s about empathy. The world, unfortunately, mostly operates
without empathy. Knowing that helps to understand various actions people take.

------
dr_dshiv
#1: "Western Esotericism: a guide for the perplexed"

You just wouldn't believe it. Extremely good scholarship.

In the same vein, "Music, science and natural magic in 17th century England"
(about the birth of the Royal Society)

------
revicon
Be Here Now by Ram Dass

[https://smile.amazon.com/Be-Here-Now-Ram-
Dass/dp/0517543052](https://smile.amazon.com/Be-Here-Now-Ram-
Dass/dp/0517543052)

------
seitzej
_Thinking in Systems_ \- Donella Meadows

 _Finite and Infinite Games_ \- James Carse

------
ceceron
"Conversations with an Executioner" is IMHO the best book giving insight into
a mind of a real nazist. It's direct and honest, much more profound than
classical historical book.

~~~
dang
Looks like the English translation is out of print and copies are going for
$70 or so on Amazon.

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-
listing/0131719181/ref=sr_1_...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-
listing/0131719181/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Conversations+with+an+Executioner&qid=1594924865&sr=8-1&dchild=1)

------
scastiel
I loved Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner!

------
chevis
The Attention Merchants by Tim Wu

edit: I should mention this is a book recommended by Yuval Noah Harari
himself. I read it myself and it is a great companion to his fantastic books.

------
voisin
Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. It is short, and written in a Socratic dialogue, and
helped me understand how and why society appears to be destroying itself.

------
benbruscella
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

------
elliotlent
Summa Theologiae by St Thomas Aquinas

------
yewenjie
All three books by Yuval Noah Harari.

------
omarchowdhury
The Crisis of the Modern World and The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the
Times by René Guénon.

------
Turing_Machine
The True Believer by Eric Hoffer.

~~~
esja
A timeless classic.

Along similar lines I'd recommend "The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in
America", by Daniel Boorstin (former Librarian of Congress).

------
tootie
Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut. Also NurtureShock taught me a lot about
parenting.

------
geori
48 Laws of Power

The Power Broker

History of Western Philosophy

------
dotsam
The World as Will and Representation by Arthur Schopenhauer

------
fsewe20
The Tao Te Ching.

------
Fiveh2751
The Evil Haunted World by Carl Sagan

------
arethuza
"The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark" by Carl Sagan

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-
Haunted_World](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World)

Also around the age of 8 or 9 I read some Erich von Däniken book and got quite
excited by what it contained. However, I eventually realised that it was
complete nonsense and I got _really_ affronted that people could write books
that contained stuff that _wasn 't true_. A useful lesson!

Edit: Another one is "Why People Believe Weird Things":

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_People_Believe_Weird_Thing...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_People_Believe_Weird_Things)

------
eneuman
Enlightenment Now - Steven Pinker

(Also Sapiens :)

Range - David Epstein

------
apta
The Quran.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
I didn’t think you would get downvoted for that.

~~~
mindcrime
I'm not surprised. There are a fair number of people here who are somewhat
hostile to religion. Heck, you could borderline count me as one of them. I
think religion is a blight on our world. But I wouldn't downvote somebody for
mentioning a religious text in this context because - like it or not - these
works tend to be HIGHLY influential, and if you want to "understand the world"
I think that understanding absolutely has to incorporate some knowledge of
religion and religious beliefs.

I'm an atheist myself, but I have a whole shelf full of religious texts,
including the Quran, several Bibles, Bhagavad Gita, Gnostic Bible, the Norse
myths, etc. for just this reason. I doubt the historicity and literal veracity
of a lot of this stuff, but knowing it has value when many other people _do_
take it all literally.

------
poletopole
Journey to Ixtlan.

------
mindcrime
_The Prince_ \- Niccolo Machiavelli

 _The 48 Rules of Power_ \- Robert Greene

 _Fooled By Randomness_ \- Nassim Nicholas Taleb

 _How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big_ \- Scott Adams

 _Basic Economics_ \- Thomas Sowell

 _The World Is Flat_ \- Thomas L. Friedman

 _The Penguin History of the World: Sixth Edition_ \- J. M. Roberts and Odd
Arne Westad

~~~
alec_kendall
Let’s say no context, which one would you recommend reading first?

~~~
mindcrime
Probably Sowell's _Basic Economics_

~~~
esja
Anyone who enjoys Sowell's perspective and is interested in (and irritated by)
modern politics should also take a look at "The Vision of the Anointed: Self-
Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy".

~~~
mindcrime
Thanks for that. I wasn't familiar with that work, despite being a big fan of
Sowell. I'm definitely adding that to my reading list.

------
jimmyvalmer
Selfish Gene

~~~
mindcrime
Good one. I can't believe I forgot to include that one. Definitely an
important book.

On a related note, I just finished _The Blind Watchmaker_ , also by Dawkins,
and it's also very good.

------
famuvie
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, by Naomi Klein (2007)

Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent,
Eudardo Galeano (1971)

------
SecurityMinded
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. HANDS DOWN!

------
qwe098cube
Ayn Rand: Atlas Shrugged

~~~
mindcrime
It's a shame you're going to get downvoted by a lot of knee-jerk "ooh, I hate
Ayn Rand" types (most of whom have probably never read a word she wrote), but
FWIW, I second your mention. _Atlas Shrugged_ is definitely worth reading.

I won't say it's a _great_ book in many ways - Rand's language is a bit
awkward and stilted (especially by contemporary standards), and it probably is
a bit too long. But in terms of getting to the heart of the divide between
those who adhere to an individualist / internal locus of control mindset, and
those who don't, it's very enlightening.

Also, FWIW, I enjoyed _The Fountainhead_ more than _Atlas Shrugged_ , and
usually recommend that anyone who is new to Rand start with it first.

------
Madzen__
Meditations - Marcus Aurelius

~~~
082349872349872
"When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today
will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly."

Not even the emperor of Rome was immune from Sturgeon's law.

    
    
        人之初
        性本善
        性相近
        習相遠
    

("When people are born, they all start good, but even though they all start
out about the same, you ought to see them after they have had time to become
different from one another by picking up habits here and there!". Translation
Dr. Linebarger, aka _Cordwainer Smith_ )

