
Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read? - bogoman
Reading a tweet by Tommy Collison¹ reminded me that the best book I have read about musical harmony is practically unknown²<p>What are the best unknown books you read?<p>¹ <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;tommycollison&#x2F;status&#x2F;1215008546657423361" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;tommycollison&#x2F;status&#x2F;1215008546657423361</a><p>² <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Harmony-its-systemic-phenomenological-aspects&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B0000E8F1U" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Harmony-its-systemic-phenomenological...</a>
======
mindcrime
_How To Measure Anything_ [1] by Douglas Hubbard.

The basic gist of the book goes something like this: in the real world
(especially in a business setting) there are many things which are hard to
measure directly, but which we may care about. Take, for example, "employee
morale" which matters because it may affect, say, retention, or product
quality. Hubbard suggests that we can measure (many|most|all|??) of these
things by using a combination of "calibrated probability assessments"[2],
awareness of nth order effects, and Monte Carlo simulation.

Basically, "if something matters, it's because it affects something that can
be measured". So you identify the causal chain from "thing" to "measurable
thing", have people who are trained in "calibrated probability assessment"
estimate the weights of the effects in the causal chain, then build a
mathematical model, and use a Monte Carlo simulation to work out how inputs to
the system affect the outputs.

Of course it's not _perfect_ , since estimation is always touchy, even using
the calibration stuff. And you could still commit an error like leaving an
important variable out of the model completely, or sampling from the wrong
distribution when doing your simulation. But generally speaking, done with
care, this is a way to measure the "unmeasurable" with a level of rigor that's
better than just flat out guessing, or ignoring the issue altogether.

[1]: [https://www.amazon.com/How-Measure-Anything-Intangibles-
Busi...](https://www.amazon.com/How-Measure-Anything-Intangibles-Business-
ebook/dp/B00INUYS2U)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calibrated_probability_assessm...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calibrated_probability_assessment)

~~~
iQuercus
It’s a good recipe for making a lot of estimation errors. Worse, it will leave
you feeling more confident than you should be. Then, when you least expect it,
it’ll blow up in your face.

~~~
hutzlibu
It also sounds a bit like real life parody to me. How to find out employee
morale?

Well, you need to hire some statistical experts, who model everything and than
give you an estimate and if they got the callibration right, the result might
be even close to reality.

Definitely easier than the other solution. Like talk to your employees once in
a while and have a culture where they are not afraid to speak up if something
is bothering them.

Ah no, too complicated. Back to math. That works better when dealing with
those irrational emotional humans.

~~~
mindcrime
The morale thing was just an example to help illustrate the principle...

~~~
hutzlibu
I know. And my point was, that you can take the statistic too far, especially
when dealing with humans. And this is happening in my opinion since a while.
Even Stalin said: "the death of one man is a tragedy, but the death of
millions just statistic." And by his actions, they were just statistic to him.

Humans are more than a number ... but when you are at a desk remote and only
have numbers, than you are disconnected and it is much easier to make inhuman
decisions as you are dealing with numbers and not humans anymore.

So that being said, yes, having the numbers additional that signal a decline
in morale for example, is probably not a bad thing to have. If this does not
replace actual human contact, because human moral also drops, when they not
feel treated as humans anymore and just as numbers.

~~~
mindcrime
_So that being said, yes, having the numbers additional that signal a decline
in morale for example, is probably not a bad thing to have. If this does not
replace actual human contact, because human moral also drops, when they not
feel treated as humans anymore and just as numbers._

Agreed. And this is true of every tool... it has a place, and when used
properly it can be of benefit. But it can also be misused in a way that is
harmful or destructive.

------
mellosouls
_Riddley Walker_ by Russell Hoban is not unknown but not hugely popular.

Post apocalyptic novel written in a made up language (think Clockwork Orange).

Poetic and deeply moving account of a boy's journey through a world where
scientific knowledge has devolved to primitive ritual and incantation; and his
dawning realisation that we lost _everything_.

I've never read anything else like it.

[https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riddley_Walker](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riddley_Walker)

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/776573.Riddley_Walker](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/776573.Riddley_Walker)

~~~
mellosouls
Here's how it starts off, be warned:

 _On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he
parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none
for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen._

 _He dint make the groun shake nor nothing like that when he come on to my
spear he wernt all that big plus he lookit poorly._

 _He done the reqwyrt he ternt and stood and clattert his teef and made his
rush and there we wer then._

 _Him on 1 end of the spear kicking his life out and me on the other end
watching him dy. I said, "Your tern now my tern later."_

~~~
cannam
That's an amazing opening. I'd like to read that now. (I have heard of this
book before, but only in outline.)

Edit: Oh my word! He wrote the text of the children's book "Bread and Jam for
Frances" (and, I now learn, a whole series of others with the same character).
That's a lovely bit of writing. I had no idea.

~~~
mellosouls
Yeah, it's like that all the way through, and some of it is inspired

------
dragontamer
"The Method of Paired Comparisons" is a 1980s dissertation which discussed a
strange form of statistics called paired comparisons. It is the fundamental
math behind the ELO system (chess matchmaking) and other tournament designs.
It was originally for psychology experiments.

My ELI5 version is... Imagine data of the form Alice > Bob (Alice beat Bob in
one match). Because many matches take place, the data can be contradictory,
like Alice > Bob and Alice < Bob. (Alice won the first match, but Bob won the
second match).

There can be loops, like Alice > Bob > Carole > Alice.

In the face of these apparent contradictions, how do you linearize the data,
or in ELI5 terms... How do you assign a score to each player?

ELO is probably the most popular methodology, but there are many kinds of
linearization strategies, Bradley Terry for example is another one that ELO
was in fact based upon.

The math is very well formed, and is likely a secret weapon for fantasy sports
players. But it doesn't seem like many people know about this form of math at
all.

~~~
dragonwriter
> "The Method of Paired Comparisons" is a 1980s dissertation which discussed a
> strange form of statistics called paired comparisons.

The H.A. David one first published 1969, second edition 1988? Or a different
one?

~~~
dragontamer
That sounds familiar. I'm going by memory, but I'm pretty sure H A David was
the author.

I guess I read the 2nd edition. 1988 sounds like a familiar copyright date.

------
rmason
The hidden persuaders by Vance Packard

I read this book as a kid, it changed how I view the world and I've never
forgotten it's lessons. It shows how the ad world is working hard to persuade
you. It convinced me to always question what are represented as facts by ads
or the media. A healthy skepticism has served me very well.

Most people never deeply question and Packard is correct that there's an
entire industry trying to persuade you. Not just what product to buy but which
college to attend or which company to work for and yes even which political
candidate to vote. Those very same hidden persuaders, some of the brightest
minds in the world, are working on the web still trying to persuade you to
click.

The closest way to bring it to HN world is PG's famous essay The Submarine
that talks about recurring themes in the media such as 'suits are coming
back'. The public relation professionals planting those stories are also
hidden persuaders.

[http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

~~~
drongoking
Sounds very interesting, but is there a more recent book covering similar
material? This dates from 1957 and I suspect there is more to say about it
now.

~~~
walterbell
_Grassroots for Hire_ by Edward Walker, [https://www.amazon.com/Grassroots-
Hire-Consultants-American-...](https://www.amazon.com/Grassroots-Hire-
Consultants-American-Democracy/dp/1107619017)

------
teddyh
_The Network Revolution – confessions of a computer scientist_ (1982)¹ is the
title which immediately springs to mind. I never see anyone else mention this
book, but I liked it. One of the many interesting things it contains is an
anonymized telling of what happened with Doug Engelbart and why, even after
giving the dazzling “ _The Mother of All Demos_ ”², the SRI company did not
succeed in its grand plan for the future of computing.

It also talks a lot about very early Internet history, and gives the history
of many things which I have not seen others reference, like Lee Felsenstein
and Community Memory.

I suspect the book might not be well-known because its author, Jacques Vallée,
it _mostly_ known for being a ufologist. I did not know this until after I
read the book, though, and the book itself does not contain any references to
UFOs. I can wholeheartedly recommend the book, and it’s _free_ to read
online!¹

Later books in the same vein like _Hackers_ and _Dealers of Lightning_ are
more well-known and seem to be appreciated by many, but this book seems to
have been overlooked by most people.

1\.
[https://books.google.com/books?id=6f8VqnZaPQwC&pg=PS1](https://books.google.com/books?id=6f8VqnZaPQwC&pg=PS1)

2\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos)

~~~
narag
_...mostly known for being a ufologist_

I remember a book he wrote, something about "Magonia". Not sure he considered
UFOs "real" but more of a collective psyche phenomenon. Actually he collected
a lot of ancient stories from previous centuries: fairy tales, Mother Mary
visions, strange happenings of 1800s and befor 1950... it was very
entertaining.

~~~
shadowprofile77
I happen to have almost all of his ufology books including "Passport to
Magonia" and you're right that he covers those subjects, but he doesn't claim
it's a collective psyche phenomenon. Instead he argues that it has elements of
this but guided by an external control system, which is itself part of some,
for lack of a better word coming to my mind right now, extradimensional
intelligence (he never makes this specific word use) that manipulates human
beliefs by manifesting entities in a way that corresponds with the more
general belief tendencies of any era. Thus, in ancient times, what we now call
UFOs manifested as "fairy folk" and such while today the tendency is more
towards temporarily physical apparitions that are made up to be "aliens",
presumably because it fits better with the psychological tendencies of our
current technological, space-exploring civilization. His core point though is
that in both cases, we're really seeing the same extremely ancient phenomenon
recur in different guises. Many nuts and bolts UFOlogists really dug into
Vallee's ideas because of this, but to me at least, it actually makes a lot
more sense than UFO's being aliens in the classical Hollywood, scifi sense of
the word. Their behavior makes no discernible sense in that context.

~~~
narag
I still think it's very interesting how he found the tales of UFO sightings
stereotypical and tried to explain the patterns in an original fashion.

I mean it's a nice way to look at things that makes me curious of the other
book.

~~~
shadowprofile77
Take him with a grain of salt, since he's just a single researcher in a big
field laden with quackery and crackpots but I thought his approach and
reasoning were refreshingly clear headed. I recommend his other UFOlogy books
very much at least for the sake of entertaining curiosity about something many
people don't read about often.

------
b215826
Among technical books, books by Cornelius Lanczos are some of the best (less
popular) books I've read. Some quotes from his "The Variational Principles of
Mechanics":

From the Preface:

 _Many of the scientific treatises of today are formulated in a half-mystical
language, as though to impress the reader with the uncomfortable feeling that
he is in the permanent presence of a superman. The present book is conceived
in a humble spirit and is written for humble people._

From Chapter 8:

 _Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is
holy ground. -- EXODUS III, 5

We have done considerable mountain climbing. Now we are in the rarefied
atmosphere of theories of excessive beauty and we are nearing a high plateau
on which geometry, optics, mechanics, and wave mechanics meet on common
ground. Only concentrated thinking, and a considerable amount of recreation,
will reveal the full beauty of our subject in which the last word has not yet
been spoken._

This book was also on Gerald Jay Sussman's must-read list of books [1].
Another great book of his is "Linear Differential Operators" \-- if you've
ever wanted an intuitive explanation for why d/dx is not Hermitian but
d^2/dx^2 is, this is the book you need to read. A quote from the book that
resonated with me when I first read it:

 _Since the days of antiquity it has been the privilege of the mathematician
to engrave his conclusions, expressed in a rarefied and esoteric language,
upon the rocks of eternity. While this method is excellent for the
codification of mathematical results, it is not so acceptable to the many
addicts of mathematics, for whom the science of mathematics is not a logical
game, but the language in which the physical universe speaks to us, and whose
mastery is inevitable for the comprehension of natural phenomena._

[1]: [http://aurellem.org/thoughts/html/sussman-reading-
list.html](http://aurellem.org/thoughts/html/sussman-reading-list.html)

~~~
lolinder
A request: please don't put quotes in code blocks. It makes them completely
unreadable on mobile.

~~~
b215826
I've italicized them. I wish HN had some other way of stylizing quotes.

~~~
K0SM0S
I usually indent quotes with ">" (markdown-style), add italics for clarity at
a glance, and maybe fancy double-quotes when it feels right.

> _“I wish HN had some other way of stylizing quotes.”_

Me too, also simple ordered lists and ```inline code```.

~~~
samstave
This is exactly how i do it as well.

------
philipkglass
"Excuse Me Sir, Would You Like to Buy a Kilo of Isopropyl Bromide?" It's a
memoir by chemist and businessman Max Gergel, full of hilarious and hair-
raising anecdotes about how a scrappy small American business could operate
before the EPA and OSHA existed. It's also powerful if anecdotal evidence for
why the EPA and OSHA were ultimately necessary.

Excerpt, brief review, and link to PDF of the full book here on Derek Lowe's
excellent blog _In the Pipeline_ :

[https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/05/27/ma...](https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/05/27/max_gergels_memoirs)

------
AndrewKemendo
I will always promote Jose Hernandez-Orallo's The Measure of All Minds [1]

It attempts to codify how we should go about measuring and evaluating the
somewhat fuzzy concept of "intelligence." He proposes an extension of his
"Anytime Intelligence Test" which could be used to test animal and machine
intelligence on a level playing field.

Measurement of task capability against a baseline is the most overlooked
problem in AI and as far as I am aware Hernandez-Orallo is the only one
focusing on it.

Notice that all of the major "breakthrough" moments in AI over the last half
century had a human baseline that an AI was competing against. Those baselines
were ones that had been already developed over years (sometimes a century) and
were part of competitive games already. Go, Chess, DOTA etc... had
leaderboards or international rankings.

For fuzzier things like driving, translation, strategy, trading etc... there
is no generally accepted and measurable baseline test for what is considered
human level, only proxies and unit specific tests. So we continue to not know
when an AI system is measurably at or exceeding human level. Without this we
can't definitively know how much progress we're making on Human Level
Intelligence.

[1][https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/measure-of-all-
minds/DC...](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/measure-of-all-
minds/DC3DFD0C1D5B3A3AD6F56CD6A397ABCA)

------
RangerScience
Travels in Tartary, Thibet, and China, by Evariste Regis Huc

He's an early 1800s French Catholic monk and is possibly the greatest travel
writer of all time. Not only is the trip amazing, but the way he writes about
it? Incredible.

In the sequel, the Chinese empire summons him to stand trial for being a
Christian, since it was mostly illegal to be so in the empire at the time. It,
too, is amazing.

[https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32747/32747-h/32747-h.htm](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32747/32747-h/32747-h.htm)

~~~
rramadass
You will love this book: _The Story of the Mongols Whom We Call the Tartars_
by Friar Giovanni Carpini.

The cover itself is worth the price of the book -
[https://www.amazon.com/Story-Mongols-Whom-Call-
Tartars/dp/08...](https://www.amazon.com/Story-Mongols-Whom-Call-
Tartars/dp/0828320179/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=The+Story+of+the+Mongols%3A+Whom+We+Call+the+Tartars&qid=1579490057&s=books&sr=1-1)

~~~
RangerScience
Oh! I will look for it.

There's something... special, about finding these in _old_ printings. I found
the sequel to the one I linked at, of all places, a flea market in Temple Bar
in Dublin, as a circa 1850s _print_. As in the book itself was over a century
old!

I look forward to finding a printing of yours that's nice and old, too!

------
officemonkey
Anthony Trollope's "The Warden."

Trollope isn't as well known as Dickens or Austen. I think the emotional
intelligence of this book makes up for the fact that nothing much happens.

There's a vicar who is old friends with the Bishop. He's made Warden of an
Almshouse for old men in the community. The amount of money he's going to get
to do basically nothing is embarrassingly large.

It's an extremely gentle book about controversy, conspiracy, and people taking
a moral stand.

It got me hooked on Trollope. His other books are far more intricate, worldly,
and entertaining. But I like this short novel very much.

~~~
sramsay
A thousand times yes to Trollope, and I think there are a lot of nineteenth-
century novelists who are like that (not quite as well known as the biggest
names, but absolutely superb). Wilkie Collins ( _The Moonstone_ , _The Woman
in White_ ) is another good example from that category.

~~~
JackFr
Dan Simmons’ novel “Drood”, a very fictional account of the relationship
between Willkie Collins and Charles Dickens. A fascinating true item I learned
from the novel was that Willkie Collins was addicted to laudanum and for many
years hallucinated his doppelgänger whom he called ‘ghost Willkie’.

~~~
mindcrime
_Drood_ was a fascinating read, and was my first exposure to Wilkie Collins.
Reading _Drood_ is the reason I have a copy of _The Moonstone_ on my shelf
waiting to be read at this very moment.

------
timkam
Ariel Rubinstein - Economic Fables. For everyone who is interested in an
intuitive and (self-)critical perspective on economic theory. The PDF version
is available for free on Rubinstein's personal web page, but requires you to
provide your email address:
[http://arielrubinstein.tau.ac.il/books.html](http://arielrubinstein.tau.ac.il/books.html)

~~~
b215826
Ariel Rubinstein is one of the most honest game theorists I've come across.
He's extremely critical of the claims that game theory can be used to
accurately predict outcomes of the real world [1]. Economic Fables is a semi-
biography as well, and has details of his life growing up in Israel. I wish
more scientists (across all disciplines) had the audacity to critically assess
their own fields of research like Rubinstein. He also gives almost all of his
books -- including his widely-used text "A Course in Game Theory" coauthored
with Osborne -- for free on his website [2].

[1]:
[http://arielrubinstein.tau.ac.il/articles/FRANKFURTER_ALLGEM...](http://arielrubinstein.tau.ac.il/articles/FRANKFURTER_ALLGEMEINE_eng.pdf)

[2]:
[http://arielrubinstein.tau.ac.il/books.html](http://arielrubinstein.tau.ac.il/books.html)

------
idlewords
"Light and Color in the Outdoors" by Marcel Minnaert. The book goes into the
physics of a lot of outdoor phenomena; you will be amazed at the things you
never noticed or thought about before reading it.

"The History and Social Influence of the Potato" is a pretty good time.

"Politics of Qat: The Role of a Drug in Ruling Yemen" may sound way too niche,
but it's fascinating as a study of transportation in a drug economy. Qat is a
perishable leaf (like salad) and the politics of the entire region depend on
who can more reliably deliver it to gunmen.

~~~
derangedHorse
Politics of Qat is almost impossible to find. Any suggestions on how to get a
copy? On the Amazon website of my region it only shows one edition available
for around $1000

~~~
tnorthcutt
[https://www.abebooks.com/first-edition/Politics-Qat-Role-
Dru...](https://www.abebooks.com/first-edition/Politics-Qat-Role-Drug-Ruling-
Yemen/9226456102/bd)

------
e15ctr0n
_The Cloudspotter 's Guide: The Science, History, and Culture of Clouds_ by
Gavin Pretor-Pinney

[https://www.amazon.com/Cloudspotters-Guide-Science-
History-C...](https://www.amazon.com/Cloudspotters-Guide-Science-History-
Culture/dp/0399533451/)

I found this book in the Best Books of the Year 2006 round-up by _The
Economist_ : [https://www.economist.com/books-and-
arts/2006/12/07/fighting...](https://www.economist.com/books-and-
arts/2006/12/07/fighting-to-be-tops)

Book review: [https://www.economist.com/books-and-
arts/2006/05/25/radiantl...](https://www.economist.com/books-and-
arts/2006/05/25/radiantly-cloudy)

Website:
[https://cloudappreciationsociety.org/](https://cloudappreciationsociety.org/)

------
cannam
Your harmony book sets a high bar for obscurity! I'm sure many of us with an
interest in harmony would like to know more - please tell us something about
it.

A book I am very fond of that I don't _think_ is widely known (though it's not
in the same league as your suggestion) is "Resisting the Virtual Life", a 1995
collection of essays on the theme of cyber-wariness published by Lawrence
Ferlinghetti's City Lights imprint - more often associated with poetry.

Also very obscure for a long time, though easily bought now: Mervyn Peake's
self-illustrated children's book "Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor". From
the author of Gormenghast, but frankly much better. Highly recommended.

~~~
bogoman
Yizhak Sadai, formerly head of the Academy of Music in Tel Aviv, was a
brilliant teacher and philosopher. Many of the best musicians in Israel
studied with him at some point during their career, even if for a brief period
of time (As a recent example: Tom Oren, winner of the last Thelonious Monk
Piano Competition, was his student for a year or so). I had the privilege to
study with him for a year, and this book used to accompany our lessons.

The book is a thorough explanation of western harmony in its very basic
aspects, from first principles. It also includes criticism of other, more
famous music theory books, which is very interesting. One thing I love about
it is how every theoretical concept comes first from what is perceived (hence
"phenomenological"). A brief example of that is how some chords, which look
like dominant chords if you look only on their notes, are sometime subdominant
chords, because of the context in which they are played.

Some quotes:

On the approach of the book: "The conventional analytic approach as taught in
academies is based primarily upon the depiction of the WRITTEN content of a
composition by means of symbols and concepts inherent to the accepted analytic
code. This analysis however, which describes mainly what is SEEN, does not
always succeed in describing what is HEARD - the perceptual musical essence"

His definition of tonality which I loved so much that I had to memorise it:
"Tonality constitutes the organisation of a given number of tones in a manner
which creates among them differences of kinetic potential."

------
chubot
I remember getting _Semiology of Graphics_ from the Palo Alto library around
2006. At the time it was sort of legendary and out of print, but it looks like
it's since been reprinted. I think you can get most of the ideas from newer
books, but it's well done and clearly ahead of its time.

[https://www.amazon.com/Semiology-Graphics-Diagrams-
Networks-...](https://www.amazon.com/Semiology-Graphics-Diagrams-Networks-
Maps/dp/1589482611)

[https://medium.com/@karlsluis/before-tufte-there-was-
bertin-...](https://medium.com/@karlsluis/before-tufte-there-was-
bertin-63af71ceaa62)

Interestingly another relatively unknown book I like (and bought/read 20 years
ago) is also about harmony:

[https://www.amazon.com/Harmonic-Experience-Harmony-
Natural-E...](https://www.amazon.com/Harmonic-Experience-Harmony-Natural-
Expression/dp/0892815604)

I would say there's two kinds of harmony: harmony in equal temperament, and
"alternative" harmonies based on physics, and this is about the latter. I
can't tell from the link what the other harmony book is about. What's good
about it?

As far as computer books, I've read a lot of recommendations here over the
years like "thinking forth", "Computer Lib" by Ted Nelson, etc. They are well
known to some audiences but not others.

\----

I also enjoy reading what people though the computing future would be like. I
have "Superdistribution" by Brad Cox:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21833331](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21833331)

And "Mirror Worlds" by Gelertner:

[https://www.amazon.com/Mirror-Worlds-Software-Universe-
Shoeb...](https://www.amazon.com/Mirror-Worlds-Software-Universe-
Shoebox/dp/019507906X)

I'm pretty sure Gelertner claims that the Facebook feed is identical to his
"life streams". I guess taken literally it's hard not to see the current
Internet as a "mirror world" that's becoming the real world.

~~~
bordercases
I would recommend "Graphics and Graphic Information Processing" by Bertin over
_La Semiologie_ simply because the latter reads more like a reference book
where Bertin is extremely _thorough_. But GGIP gets straight to the point and
can frame your thinking while going through _Semiologie_ such that you won't
lose your way.

Unfortunately GGIP is expensive so I would try to find it at your local
library. (French copies are online).

------
alephx
Science, Politics and Gnosticism: Two essays by Eric Voegelin,
[https://www.amazon.com/Science-Politics-Gnosticism-Two-
Essay...](https://www.amazon.com/Science-Politics-Gnosticism-Two-Essays-
ebook/dp/B007NJOW14/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8)

I found it to be a very interesting and deep take on the philosophical and
historical origins of many contemporary political currents.

The Road to Serfdom, by F. Hayek, a liberal economist.

I found it very well written, amusing and even hilarious in how even in the
1940's supporters of communism and progressives where making the same kind of
arguments that are made today. Hayek needless to say, deals brilliantly with
these. As relevant today as when written. I find its ideas resonate a lot when
thinking about how systems of all kind come to be and function.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Road to Serfdom is some of the most simplistic empty bilge I've read,
bordering on unreadable. I guess it's pushing 35 years ago I read it, while I
was still a keen supporter of the mainstream right, after an enthusiastic loan
from a fellow Thatcherite friend. In reading it I found it so absurdly weak
and obviously hollow that it started me questioning all "known facts" and
"common sense" of my politics. That was the point that started my search for a
range of economic and political viewpoints, reading deeper, and moved me away
from Thatcherism to the centre ground!

The writing style was terrible, as every third sentence seems to close with
something like "and this inevitably leads to socialism and serfdom, and
eliminates freedom". Only a dozen or so pages in and I was thoroughly sick of
this device, as it's becoming clear that's his main and just about only
argument -- extreme repetition.

It's a short article padded to a book length rant that anything less than
total laissez-faire market libertarianism leads to slavery, serfdom, social
democracy, socialism, nazism or communism (He appears to understand no
difference between any of these). That any tiny government plan, regulation or
service must lead to totalitarianism and blackshirts.

So my memory is also of finding it hilarious, I suspect for very different
reasons. I also remember being left completely baffled as to _why_ it ever got
to be popular. :)

------
DyslexicAtheist
Jacques Ellul, _The Technological Society (La Technique)_
[https://ratical.org/ratville/AoS/TheTechnologicalSociety.pdf](https://ratical.org/ratville/AoS/TheTechnologicalSociety.pdf)

Jacques Ellul, _Propaganda_
[https://archive.org/details/Propaganda_201512](https://archive.org/details/Propaganda_201512)

Thomas Ligotti _The Conspiracy Against The Human Race_
[https://archive.org/details/TheConspiracyAgainstTheHumanRace](https://archive.org/details/TheConspiracyAgainstTheHumanRace)

and anything written by Peter Wessel Zapffe (an introduction to his work
[https://philosophynow.org/issues/45/The_Last_Messiah](https://philosophynow.org/issues/45/The_Last_Messiah))

~~~
natmaka
Leopold Kohr, especially "The Breakdown of Nations"

------
8bitsrule
I consider Michael Polanyi's works to be very important in a certain way.

MP's _The Tacit Dimension_ (1966, ~120pp) is a good introduction to his ideas
about "Tacit knowledge", i.e. 'we can know more than we can tell', e.g. facial
recognition. , A quick and enjoyable read that might appeal to many in this
crowd.

Akin to Hadamard's _Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field_.

If you've got time, MP's earlier _Personal Knowledge_ (1958, ~400pp) might be
a worthwhile deeper-dive. I recall that his style reminded me of Lewis Thomas.

------
qnsi
Self-directed behavior - Watson

This is a textbook for behavior change course, but it is 100% practical
(project to pass subject is to change some kind of behavior)

Only tested information Science-based. This book can change your life but you
wont find it mentioned anywhere

~~~
bordercases
Very good book. I forgot how I stumbled into it but it's pretty much _the_
text for changing behavior. Only person coming close is BJ Fogg's work on tiny
habits who really just distilled the material into "You won't believe THAT ONE
TRICK, psychologists will HATE you!".

------
45ure
Aquarium by Viktor Suvorov.

 _The "Aquarium" of the title is the nickname given to GRU headquarters in
Moscow by those who work there. "What sort of fish are there swimming there?"
asks Suvorov of his boss when he learns about it. "There's only one kind
there—piranhas."_ ─ Wikipedia.

Book:
[https://archive.org/details/ViktorSuvorovAquariumTheCareerAn...](https://archive.org/details/ViktorSuvorovAquariumTheCareerAndDefectibOk.xyz)

~~~
ttctciyf
Nice!

My "best unknown" in the espionage topic would be Gordon Winter's _Inside
BOSS_ [1] which tells of the author's stint in the employ of South African
intelligence during the apartheid era.

Sample passage:

> I asked [Intel chief] H. J. van den Bergh how on earth British intelligence
> could obtain all the names of people who voted Communist in British
> elections. Surely the vote was secret. H J laughed and said any voter
> attending a polling station automatically had his name checked on the
> voters’ roll, which naturally gave his residential address. And when he
> voted he was given a numbered counterfoil. His voters’ roll number was
> written on the counterfoil stub which bore the same number.

> ‘It is therefore possible for the voting slip to be related to the
> counterfoil stub, which then gives the man’s number on the voters’ roll,’
> explained Van Den Bergh.

> ‘But all the voting slips are locked in big black metal boxes and locked
> away after the elections, so how do British intelligence get to them?’

> H. J. van den Bergh shook his head sadly as if he was sorry I was such a
> simpleton.

> ‘That’s the answer the British authorities will always give if anyone claims
> that ballot papers are secretly scrutinized. But let me ask you some very
> simple questions. First, you agree that the voting slips are placed in boxes
> and then filed away in some official building somewhere?’

> ‘Yes,’ I answered.

> ‘And presumably those boxes are placed in a room?’

> ‘Yes.’

> ‘Does that room have a door?’

> ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

> ‘Does the door have a lock?’

> ‘I should imagine so.’

> ‘Is there a key to that lock?’

> ‘Yes, there must be.’

> ‘Then,’ said H. J. van den Bergh triumphantly, ‘somebody must look after the
> key.’

> Only then did I realize what he was getting at.

1:
[https://archive.org/details/INSIDEBOSS/page/n5](https://archive.org/details/INSIDEBOSS/page/n5)

------
ukulele
I'm always amazed at how few people have read _The Making of the Atomic Bomb_
by Richard Rhodes.

It covers the physics, politics, motivation, cultural implications, and so
much more. It's one of those books where being extremely long is a feature
because it's unbelievably interesting. I highly recommend it.

------
jonnycomputer
The Structure and Confirmation of Evolutionary Theory by Elisabeth Lloyd has
had an outsized effect on my thinking, even though I do not work in that
field.

[https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691000466/th...](https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691000466/the-
structure-and-confirmation-of-evolutionary-theory)

~~~
yesenadam
I decided to investigate feminist philosophers of science a few years ago,
since I'd heard they write postmodern garbage, and randomly picked Elisabeth
Lloyd first. I ended up reading everything I could get my hands on, all her
books, papers, talks, webpages. Totally admirable. She is awesome, and
responds to critics with tireless patience. 'Feminist science' as she does it
is just good science. A lot of it points out blind spots in the ways various
scientific fields have operated, because of things taken for granted.

~~~
jonnycomputer
You know, I haven't read anything else by her than the book I mentioned;
however it surprises me none that she would address feminist issues in science
in a rigorous and fair-minded way. Maybe, someday when I have time again, I'll
pick up and read her other stuff!

------
rland
Shipwrecks, by Akira Yoshimura. It's short, cold, meditative, and harsh. The
author has won several awards in Japan but isn't widely known otherwise.

I read all his other books (those that were translated) after it.

~~~
oska
This is interesting, from his wikipedia page [1] :

> After the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, Yoshimura's nonfiction
> chronicle of three previous tsunamis on the coast of Sanriku, _Sanriku
> Kaigan Otsunami_ received an influx of orders, requiring a reprint of
> 150,000 copies. Yoshimura's wife and author in her own right, Setsuko
> Tsumura donated the royalties from the book to the village of Tanohata,
> which was heavily impacted by the tsunami. Tanohata was a favorite place of
> Yoshimura's to visit and inspired him to begin research on the historical
> tsunamis of the area.

Thank you for the recommendation.

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

------
kristopolous
The Analysis of Art by Dewitt Parker. This was referenced in Dynamics of
software development by Jim McCarthy. They're both pretty good but the Parker
book is kinda rare.

Propaganda and Information Warfare in the Twenty-First Century by Scot
MacDonald, it's purely academic but also a fantastic read. Also academic is
Technoscientific Imaginaries: Conversations, Profiles, and Memoirs by George
Marcus, also obscure but at least easier to find.

The 60s-80s books from City Lights are nice when you come across them. Pretty
rare though.

------
dwd
The Journey to the West - Wu Cheng'en

Abridged English translation:

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/100237.Monkey](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/100237.Monkey)

In its book form this story is basically unknown in the English-speaking world
despite being considered one of four literary classics in Asia. And the 70s TV
show that was based on this story was very faithful to the source material,
particularly the humour.

~~~
narag
70s shows? I had not heard of them. I did know that Dragon Ball is loosely
based on it.

~~~
severine
Actually 80s:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_to_the_West_(1986_TV_s...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_to_the_West_\(1986_TV_series\))

And a more recent (2010) remake:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_Cheng%27en_and_Journey_to_t...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_Cheng%27en_and_Journey_to_the_West)

~~~
dwd
Hmm, never saw either of those.

I grew up watching this classic:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_(TV_series)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_\(TV_series\))

------
nrjames
West With the Night, by Beryl Markham. It’s a beautiful autobiography about
and by a woman who grew up in British East Africa, became a bush pilot, and
eventually became the first person to fly across the Atlantic from East to
West, departing from Britain.

I recommend not reading the introduction.

[https://www.amazon.com/West-Night-Memoir-Beryl-
Markham/dp/08...](https://www.amazon.com/West-Night-Memoir-Beryl-
Markham/dp/0865477639/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=west+with+the+night+by+beryl+markham&qid=1579486145&sprefix=west+with+the+night&sr=8-1)

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

------
CalRobert
The Lumberjacks by Donald Mackay
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7797112-the-
lumberjacks](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7797112-the-lumberjacks).
Tales recorded from British Colombian lumberjacks in the 19th century.

I found it completely by accident, picking it up at random off the shelf in my
university's library while procrastinating.

------
killjoywashere
Not exactly a book, _Assessing and Strengthening the Manufacturing and Defense
Industrial Base and Supply Chain Resiliency of the United States_. (1)

It raises some concerns that folks in this forum are probably interested in
and could do something about. Things like forcing US companies doing business
in China to transfer dual-use technologies, the lack of US suppliers for
certain goods, like high tenacity polyester fiber, domestic production of
PCBs, specialized glass for NVG systems, a shortage of software engineers, but
also shortages in skilled trades, like welders.

The dominance of the Chinese in certain critical industries is also
problematic. For example one manufacturer produces 70% of small drones, which
then creates secondary attack surfaces, like lack of security on the drone’s
link. Another is the Chinese takeover of solar panel manufacturing, which
creates a potential energy security risk.

For those skeptical of any report from the current administration, I would
refer you to Ash Carter’s _Inside the Five-Sided Box_ (2) which raises many of
the same issues.

(1)
[https://media.defense.gov/2018/Oct/05/2002048904/-1/-1/1/ASS...](https://media.defense.gov/2018/Oct/05/2002048904/-1/-1/1/ASSESSING-
AND-STRENGTHENING-THE-MANUFACTURING-AND%20DEFENSE-INDUSTRIAL-BASE-AND-SUPPLY-
CHAIN-RESILIENCY.PDF)

(2) [https://www.amazon.com/Inside-Five-Sided-Box-Lifetime-
Leader...](https://www.amazon.com/Inside-Five-Sided-Box-Lifetime-
Leadership/dp/1524743917)

~~~
contingencies
It reflects badly on HN that the #1 response to an intellectual question views
the world through an obsolete lens of nationalism.

~~~
bordercases
International cooperation is only really feasible with a hegemon. Pick a
hegemon. You should pick the US.

~~~
pergadad
Ask all the countries the US invaded or where it initiated coups for its own
interests... most of South America and the middle East saw themselves at the
receiving end of such events.

I personally would prefer the US over China but I'd also prefer NO hegemon,
especially when that hegemon tends to abuse its power.

~~~
blackrock
When did China ever invade the United States? Or any other distant western
country?

Is this the great fear of white Americans? That the Chinese would load a
billion soldiers on an aircraft carrier and invade the shores of Seattle, San
Francisco, and Los Angeles? Does China even have an aircraft carrier that can
cross the Pacific?

This must surely be the plot of a bad B movie, and starring Ben Affleck.

~~~
bordercases
> Is this the great fear of white Americans? That the Chinese would load a
> billion soldiers on an aircraft carrier and invade the shores of Seattle,
> San Francisco, and Los Angeles? Does China even have an aircraft carrier
> that can cross the Pacific?

Hollowing out US institutions by replacing them with PRC puppets and shell
corporations is just as worthwhile to defend against as any invasion would be.

If I remember correctly China doesn't even let you have dual citizenships. So
a lot of people with connections to mainland are going to be in a position of
personally deciding where their support goes even if they are born with US
citizenships.

As far as wielding hard power goes, one example for China they've been testing
the waters of wielding military power in territory that is typically
controlled by US allies in the Spratley Islands to see how much they can get
away with in occupying that location.

------
pgreenwood
"The Symmetries of Things" [1] by John H. Conway, Heidi Burgiel, and Chaim
Goodman-Strauss.

A fantastic and beautifully illustrated expository work describing symmetry
groups such as the 17 wallpaper groups in the plane (think Escher), and other
tiling groups in for example the hyperbolic plane. Love the use of orbifold
notation as opposed to crystallographic notation.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Symmetries-Things-John-H-
Conway/dp/15...](https://www.amazon.com/Symmetries-Things-John-H-
Conway/dp/1568812205)

------
Wildgoose
I highly recommend the English/Canadian author Matthew Hughes and his novels
"Majestrum" and "The Gist Hunter & Other Stories". His prose is just beautiful
to read, you really do savour every word.

An even more obscure writer would be Christopher Evans and especially his
novella "Chimeras". This is set in a medieval world in which some people have
the Talent, an ability to create dazzling works of art out of thin air - just
pure thought-stuff. An act of mental creation which appeals to the computer
programmer in me.

------
thorin
Not sure if these books are unknown or fallen out of favor, but I've never
spoken to anyone else who's read them without me passing them on first:

Travels - Michael Crichton - a number of useful life lessons I'm only just
catching up on

[https://www.amazon.co.uk/Travels-Vintage-Departures-
Michael-...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Travels-Vintage-Departures-Michael-
Crichton/dp/0804171270/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3E8SW874CLAC8&keywords=travels+michael+crichton&qid=1579527486&sprefix=travels+micha%2Caps%2C292&sr=8-1)

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ragged-
Trousered-Philanthropists-Wo...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ragged-Trousered-
Philanthropists-Wordsworth-
Classics/dp/184022682X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1DN57D10PVLZS&keywords=ragged+trousered+philanthropist&qid=1579527544&sprefix=ragged+tr%2Caps%2C170&sr=8-1)

Ishmael [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ishmael-Novel-
Book-1-ebook/dp/B000S...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ishmael-Novel-
Book-1-ebook/dp/B000SEFH6A/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=ismael&qid=1579527572&sr=8-1)

Another thought, Robert Heinlein doesn't seem well known in the UK these days
but I think he might be better thought of in the UK although may be considered
dated and sexist. I often see him quoted on here.

~~~
inerg
Any chance you can expand on what kind of life lessons you found in the
Travels book? The description of the book makes it sound like it's just a
collection of adventures.

~~~
thorin
It's split into 3 parts

1\. Medical School

2\. World travel

3\. Inner travel

The medical school part has some interesting perspective on
careers/development and life goals. The world travel deals quite a bit on
relationships. The inner travels part challenges a few preconceptions. I first
read it about 20yrs ago and I've re-read it a few times which is unusual for
me.

------
logicchains
Spinoza's "Ethics". It was one of the first efforts to apply mathematical
logic to philosophy (Wittgenstein borrowed a lot from it), and to provide an
axiomatic model of emotion. Very roughly, it took a two pronged approach to
illustrate there is no objective logical foundation for differentiating
between "me" and "not me": firstly, by showing that, given determinism,
everyone/thing is part of a single unalterable process, and secondly, by
showing that there is no single objective standard for drawing the line
between a thing and the things around it. (He doesn't deal with
nondeterminism, but most of the conclusions could be mapped directly to a
system containing a mix of nondeterminism and determinism, as adding
nondeterminism cannot "increase" moral responsibility or "self-causation").

In that sense it gave a (comparatively) rigorous argument for the nebulous
eastern concept of "oneness". Using this foundation he then makes a logical
argument (given his axiomatisation of emotion) for why we should be happy.

It's also the book that made me realise that, even if the jealous Abrahamic
God exists, He is not moral. Because due to determinism every action can be
traced back to the initial cause, so it doesn't make sense for Him who created
the universe to punish or reward people for actions that were ultimately
predictable consequences of the universe's creation, which if omniscient he
should have foreseen. (And if some things are nondeterministic, this still
applies, because somebody cannot gain moral responsibility through decreased
determinism).

~~~
thisisastopsign
> there is no objective logical foundation for differentiating between "me"
> and "not me": firstly, by showing that, given determinism, everyone/thing is
> part of a single unalterable process, and secondly, by showing that there is
> no single objective standard for drawing the line between a thing and the
> things around it.

I don’t see it. Does he address the fact that dozens of other philosophers
over the years have argued the opposite?

> ultimately predictable consequences of the universe's creation, which if
> omniscient he should have foreseen.

Isn’t this just free will? Is that the nondeterminism that the author is
ignoring?

~~~
logicchains
>I don’t see it. Does he address the fact that dozens of other philosophers
over the years have argued the opposite?

He creates an axiomatic foundation out of definitions that most philosophers
of the time would have found reasonable (nowadays they're also reasonable,
just takes a bit of work to get past the language choices he made, as
mathematical logic didn't exist then so it's phrased in terms of geometric and
theological language). He then uses this foundation to show that there's no
objective measure for dividing individualness (what is me, what is not me) and
responsibility (what was caused by me, what was not caused by me), essentially
a proof that given the axioms no such measure can exist. Similar to how one
might give a proof that e.g. there is no way to assign a Lebesgue measure to
every subset of the real number line. Note this is just a very rough summary;
his actual proof is long and dense.

>Isn’t this just free will?

Spinoza essentially shows that if free will is defined as "being 100% the
cause of some action", then free will does not exist. Because any action we
take, is determined by who we are at that moment, and who we are at that
moment depends on actions we took in the past, and this causal chain can be
traced backwards to who we were as a baby, when we could not make decisions.

Another way to look at it. If the universe was deterministic, and I had
unlimited computing power and storage for simulation, then I could exactly
predict someone's actions in life (assuming consistent laws of physics). If it
was nondeterministic, then there are some things I couldn't predict, but these
things would all be the product of chance, so how could they increase the
degree to which any particularly individual is the cause of some action? They
would just increase the degree to which randomness was the cause of some
actions.

------
richev
I can really recommend Sweating Bullets: Notes about Inventing PowerPoint[1].
Written by Robert Gaskins, inventor of PowerPoint, I found it enjoyable and
interesting to learn the history and design decisions behind a product most
take for granted, and some object to the overuse of.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Sweating-Bullets-Notes-Inventing-
Powe...](https://www.amazon.com/Sweating-Bullets-Notes-Inventing-
PowerPoint/dp/0985142421)

------
brownbat
Andy Kessler's How We Got Here.

Only a few hundred people have rated it on GoodReads, but if you wanted to
trace a march of technological progress from swords to the Internet, it does a
good job. There are definitely other stories you could tell about this
accelerating sweep of technological change, but this one was a solid rapid
overview and really stuck some ideas with me about how changes compound (or
completely swerve to a new goal) over time.

The original tweet is more about how domain experts would rely on books nobody
outside that domain has heard of, so maybe I should be thinking more about
textbooks that stuck with me. Sources of Chinese Tradition, the Tractatus, and
A Mathematical Theory of Computation all left pretty lasting influences in one
way or another.

Sources of Japanese Tradition discusses the origins of Tendai Zen Buddhism,
with some bits on Dogen, who once wrote something like, "If you want to
achieve a certain thing, you must first become a certain person. After
becoming a certain person, you no longer want that certain thing."

That's a pretty good tie in to Kessler's view of the last several hundred
years of human progress. We were repeatedly solving some other problem, which
once we had the tools to solve that, it became nearly irrelevant compared to
what else we could do now.

~~~
chubot
FWIW I read most of _How We Got Here_ book last year after having it in my
reading list for something like 15 years :-/ Somehow it popped up after all
that time.

I thought it was a great concept for a book, and the author has a unique
viewpoint and knows his stuff, but it wasn't very well written. There seemed
to be a lot of detail without defining terms, but it was also "breezy" and
fast. Just my opinion.

~~~
brownbat
Yeah, it's admittedly more along the lines of an insightful blog post or a
really good bar conversation than some kind of Rise and Fall, expectations
management is probably due here.

But it kind came on this crest of technological advancement nonfiction, like
Brilliant or Salt, and gets some of the key implications across in a fast and
digestible way.

------
smitty1e
I'll venture "The Third Policeman" for comic surrealism.

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27208.The_Third_Policema...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27208.The_Third_Policeman)

~~~
Finnucane
One of my favorites, if you couldn’t guess from my user name. At-Swim-Two-
Birds is also wonderful. Flann O’Brien isn’t completely obscure, but not very
well known in the US.

------
MinusGix
_Electrons and Valence: Development of the Theory, 1900-1925_ [1] by Anthony
N. Stranges I picked this up at a Texas A&M (It is published by A&M) book sale
for cheap. This book caught my eye as it was one of the few actual books on
any form of science I had seen there (many of the books were history, and
often specifically about Texas, which did not interest me). As the title
suggests it is a part History, part Chemistry, book about the development of
theory of electrons and the steps it took to get there. It explains various
theories, and state of the Chemistry world at certain times in History. It
often quotes and references older books, and provides the citation at the
bottom. While my Chemistry knowledge is really lacking, it was still quite an
interesting read. I haven't yet completed it, but I'm slowly working my way
through it, and it's reinvigorated some of my interest in Chemistry that I had
lost in schooling.

[1]: [https://www.amazon.com/Electrons-Valence-Development-
Theory-...](https://www.amazon.com/Electrons-Valence-Development-
Theory-1900-1925/dp/0890961247)

------
zokier
I did enjoy The Transylvania (or Writing on the Wall) Trilogy by Bánffy. It
has similar feeling to Tolstoy (Anna Kareina, War and Peace) but bit less
high-concept and more grounded to reality, maybe bit closer to Il Gattopardo
by Lampedusa. One nice thing about Bánffy is that it gives insight on a period
and setting that was so important, but not that well understood, in (European)
history; the just before fall of Austro-Hungarian empire that eventually then
led to triggering first world war. The books are fictional, but the author was
an actual count from that era which lends certain degree of authenticity to
it. Of course it also means that there are some nostalgic elements to it, but
that just gives it bit more charm imho.

This is the article that introduced it to me; I don't know it counts as
"unknown" if it has a Guardian story written about it..
[https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2011/aug/05/writ...](https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2011/aug/05/writing-
wall-miklos-banffy-summer-readings)

------
arikr
How to get lucky by Gunther. Based on the premise that luck is very useful for
getting what you want, and that there are very practical techniques you can
follow for generating results that look like “luck”. Absolutely excellent
book.

------
yourcelf
Radio Gaga: A Mixtape for the End of Humanity, by Stefani Bulsara.

An off-kilter, hilarious, inventive, and cutting apocalyptic sci fi novel
about pop music. Writing style is like Douglas Adams meets Tom Robbins,
through the lens of Top 40 radio and tabloids.

[https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781733712569](https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781733712569)

~~~
stefanibulsara
Ohhh emmm geee! Thanks for posting about my book! I'm so honored and
appreciative! And as an author of an unknown book, where _did_ you find it?!?

------
bookofjoe
"The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life" — Erving Goffman (1959). Timeless.
[https://www.amazon.com/Presentation-Self-Everyday-
Life/dp/03...](https://www.amazon.com/Presentation-Self-Everyday-
Life/dp/0385094027/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=erving+goffman&qid=1579490176&s=books&sr=1-1)

------
yosito
The most interesting unknown book I've read was Plato and the Creation of the
Hebrew Bible by Russell E. Gmirkin. It'a an academic thesis and not really
written for readability by the general public, but the ideas it presents are
mind blowing. The gist is a theory that the Hebrew Bible was written by pre-
Jewish scholars and politicians who studied Plato's works at the Library at
Alexandria with the goal of uniting (12) disparate pre-Jewish tribes into one
nation modeled after Plato's Republic. It's interesting both as a challenge to
the mainstream theory that Plato's works were inspired by the Hebrew Bible,
and as a look at an ancient social engineering project that still has huge
implications thousands of years later.
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32183185-plato-and-
the-c...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32183185-plato-and-the-creation-
of-the-hebrew-bible)

------
tomek_zemla
_Unflattening_ by Nick Sousanis. It was originally the first PhD theses
written in a form of a comic book. It is a study on how we gather, communicate
and invent knowledge using images.

[https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/07/20/thinking-
thro...](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/07/20/thinking-through-
images-an-interview-with-nick-sousanis/)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unflattening](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unflattening)
[https://www.amazon.com/Unflattening-Nick-
Sousanis/dp/0674744...](https://www.amazon.com/Unflattening-Nick-
Sousanis/dp/0674744438/ref=sr_1_1)

------
rebuilder
"A girl among the anarchists" by Isabel Meredith (pseudonym) - found it on
Project Gutenberg somehow, it's a contemporary (fictionalized) account of
anarchist activism in late 19th-century Britain and I found it to be a
fascinating description of fanaticism.

------
lcall
Very recently: Spillworthy, by Johanna Harness
([https://www.amazon.com/Spillworthy-Johanna-
Harness/dp/099138...](https://www.amazon.com/Spillworthy-Johanna-
Harness/dp/0991381025)).

Might be targeted at a teen audience, but I enjoyed it very much, as relaxing,
clean, light fiction that makes the reader want to be a better person while
they enjoy themselves. Very thoughtful and enjoyable, hard to put down. Shows
a hard situation be resolved, from the perspective of the youths involved, and
I thought it shows a lot of kind thoughtfulness over many years, by the
author. (Some years ago I knew the author's husband.)

------
perdid0
Gog by Giovanni Papini.

I read it in Spanish, and apparently it's not the easiest book to find in
English, but if you do, it's definitely different.

[https://neglectedbooks.com/?p=2493](https://neglectedbooks.com/?p=2493)

~~~
LargoLasskhyfv
That site alone deserves its own mention in this context?

At least for me it was worthy of bookmarking.

------
scanr
I thoroughly enjoyed “Constellation Games” by Leonard Richardson who
coincidentally also wrote BeautifulSoup, the python HTML parser.

~~~
schoen
It's about first contact with aliens, who turn out to have a _really_ good
version of the Internet Archive's software preservation project.

------
hyperion2010
Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague de Camp which appears to recently have
received a reprinting, my copy is from the 40s.

Deathworld by Harry Harrison. I've been waiting for some screenplay writer to
stumble across this one, and if I had to guess James Cameron probably did, but
just didn't tell anyone.

SLAN by A. E. van Vogt.

The Witches of Karres by James H. Schmitz.

Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen, and Paratime by H. Beam Piper.

However the best of all, is maybe only slightly less know, since the author is
certainly extremely well known: Tuf Voyaging by George R. R. Martin. An
absolutely fantastic collection of stories about an ecological engineer.

~~~
chadcmulligan
Is SLAN unknown now? It's a great book, along with Null A, and the Weapon
shops of Isher.

Here's SLAN online its out of copyright now apparently
[https://www.prosperosisle.org/spip.php?article260](https://www.prosperosisle.org/spip.php?article260)

------
K0SM0S
Not exactly unknown but rarely mentioned these days:

 _Psycho-Cybernetics, A New Way to Get More Living Out of Life_ (1960) by Dr
Maxwell Maltz, MD.

A foundational work in the field of self-image and more generally self-growth.
Sort of the missing link between Hill-Carnegie and Covey, it's the first of
its kind to shatter the body/mind duality and show facts in hand the power of
the whole. A positively enriching read, containing a few invaluable ideas.

If you're a Zen or Stoic like me, you'll find the traces of these roots in
there, the lineage of ideas.

~~~
cmnzs
I really liked most of this book. But near the beginning, he cites some
parapsychology research findings that really haven't aged well.

I did more research on this
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Banks_Rhine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Banks_Rhine),
and it's really quite fascinating that JB Rhine was doing parapyschology
research at Harvard and Duke University.

Still, the book is great

~~~
K0SM0S
Very interesting to know!

> parapsychology research at Harvard and Duke

Takes us back a ways away, huh? Different world, but don't get too comfy in
this one, things have a cyclic tendency IME. ;-)

I'll tell you this: I can see why they went there, Maxwell and Rhine and so
many others. All of my research into such topics¹ shows that the mind-body
connection and its manifestations (consciousness, "soul", etc) have always
been such "hard problems" that they've always been met with supra- or para-
normal solutions — whether in myths, in philosophies ancient and recent, in
the generally benevolent groups (spiritual, friendly, etc). And it's still
very much an open question, thus lending itself to beliefs.

I think there are also metaphors, images that were so good and are now so old
that they became their own thing, and lost almost all connection to the things
they described. "Magic" is a good example of that — the power of the word, and
behind that knowledge. Magic as a concept is "old speak" (pre-recorded
history) for _power_ , very human and very real power.

I find it actually fascinating that we hold such beliefs about possible
superpowers, I can't help but think this ability to image (imagine) _more_ is
what actually drives civilization at the lowest level.

[1]: I mean self-development/help/growth, philosophy in the pre-20th century
common meaning of a "practice", "recipes for good living", not the "science"
or study thereof we made it out later and to this day.

------
antoncohen
The Union Station (EarthCent Ambassador) series by E. M. Foner[1]. They are
fun lighthearted sci-fi about the characters and their lives. But under the
lighthearted fun hides thought provoking commentary on society and people. The
books are included with Kindle Unlimited so if you are a member of that you
can read the books at no additional cost.

[1]
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00K4I391A](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00K4I391A)

------
vikingcaffiene
House of Leaves. I've literally never read anything like it.

~~~
laserDinosaur
I never finished House of Leaves. I found the house aspects of the story
really interesting, but all the parts outside it (the tattoo artist guy) I
found insufferably boring. Does it ever actually have any point to his side of
the story? It felt like half the book was a waste of time, but maybe it pays
off in the end?

~~~
silicon2401
This is exactly how I felt reading the book. If the innermost story were
extracted into a standalone work, it would be excellent, even more so if it
were expanded upon. All the outer frame stories were painfully uninteresting
to me. I'd suggest finishing the house story and just skipping the rest, as I
felt similarly to you and got nothing out of the rest, but really enjoyed the
house stuff.

------
cossray
Half of a Yellow Sun[1] by Chimamanda Ngozi.

If you want to sample probably a different style and culture, I would highly
recommend this book. This is a 2006 novel by a prolific African writer and is
set in the late 1960s Biafran times in Nigeria. There is a lot in it and is
richly written.

[1]:
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18749.Half_of_a_Yellow_S...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18749.Half_of_a_Yellow_Sun)

------
bordercases
Foundations of Decision Analysis by Hubbard.

Most people here may have scraped work on decision theory. But Hubbard turns
the field into a coherent skillset. Otherwise you're just sitting around
talking _about_ decision models instead of _using_ and _practicing with_ them,
for everyday living. This is what Hubbard gives you.

"Smart Choices" is a book which may be better known but complements FoDA
nicely as an entry-level supplement.

~~~
mindcrime
_Foundations of Decision Analysis by Hubbard._

Sounds interesting, but I couldn't find this in a quick preliminary search. Do
you have a link handy? The only book titled "Foundations of Decision Analysis"
I came across was by Howard and Abbas.

Also, not sure if this is related to the Hubbard you refer to or not, but
there's a gentleman named Douglas Hubbard who has written some really
excellent material in this area. I consider his book _How To Measure Anything_
to be one of the best / most important books I've read, and it's one I
recommend to pretty much everybody.

~~~
bordercases
Sorry I meant Howard.

~~~
mindcrime
Gnarly. Thanks for the recommendation. I think I'm going to order a copy of
this one.

------
rramadass
This is a thread after my own heart! I love finding out and reading old, less
well-known and thought provoking books on a variety of subject matters. I have
come to the conclusion that "popular" almost always equals "lowest common
denominator" and "fad of the month" particularly given today's media hype
cycles. Moreover one has to guard against having ones mental models bounded
within a box. By actively seeking out lesser known and out of the way
viewpoints one truly grows. Some books from my collection which i have not
seen mentioned here (in no particular order or categorization);

* The Natural History of Nonsense by Bergan Evans

* Programming on Purpose, Essays on Software Design by P. J. Plauger

* Management: A Political Activity by Ted Stephenson

* The Energy of Life: The Science of What Makes Our Minds and Bodies Work by Guy Brown

* Patterns for Time-Triggered Embedded Systems: Building Reliable Applications with the 8051 Family of Microcontrollers by Michael Pont.

* UNIX Systems for Modern Architectures: Symmetric Multiprocessing and Caching for Kernel Programmers by Curt Schimmel.

* Maxims and Reflections (Ricordi) by Francesco Guicciardini

There are a bunch more i have to root around for :-)

------
sfRattan
Fiction: _Voice Net_ by Shinichi Hoshi

An eerie look into the future from before the age of computers. The number of
things about our lives now he got essentially right in 1969 is frankly
stunning. Twelve interwoven short stories explore various residents in the
Honeydew Condomiminium: how a computer managed network of telephone based
services has affected their daily lives in sometimes nefarious ways. The
novella's availability is limited in English, but there's a link to the Kindle
store from the late author's webpage[1].

Non-Fiction: _The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature Of Mass Movements_ by
Eric Hoffer

I think this book remains the most useful and concise guide to understanding
mass movements and fanaticism I've ever read. It pairs nicely with Saul
Alinsky's _Rules for Radicals_. Hoffer's book is more expository and
cautionary where Alinsky's book is more enthusiastic and encouraging, while
both books have a healthy dose of cynicism about mass movements themselves.

\-----

[1]:
[https://shinichihoshi.com/voice_net.html](https://shinichihoshi.com/voice_net.html)

------
benatkin
Lila by Robert Pirsig.

Everyone knows about Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ZMM). Lila is
not as well known, but it's fun to read if you _really_ enjoyed ZMM.
[https://www.amazon.com/Lila-Inquiry-Robert-M-
Pirsig/dp/05532...](https://www.amazon.com/Lila-Inquiry-Robert-M-
Pirsig/dp/0553299611)

~~~
withparadox2
Does it talk about the same thing as ZMM?

~~~
jdkee
Lila delves further in the Pirsig's Metaphysics of Quality (MOQ) which is
quite fascinating. His dialogues on static vs dynamic quality coloured my view
of the world for years.

~~~
withparadox2
Sounds great, I can not hesitate to read it.

------
Rerarom
Fiction:

Mordecai Roshwald, _Level 7_

Alexander Dewdney, _The Planiverse_

Joseph Heller, _God Knows_

Alan Lightman, _Einstein 's Dreams_

Non-fiction:

Jane Goodall, _In the Shadow of Man_

Gian-Carlo Rota, _Indiscrete Thoughts_

C. S. Lewis, _The Discarded Image_

Michael E. Brown, _How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming_

Robert Kegan, _In Over Our Heads_

Michael Harris, _The Atomic Times_

I may add guilty pleasures like the _Legacy of the Force_ series, but I don't
think this is what people here are looking for.

------
riffraff
"once upon an ice age" by Roy Lewis (sometimes sold as "how we ate father" or
"the evolution man", I think).

It's a first person narration of some Pleistocene hominid, somewhat
educational but mostly just hilarious, in the sense of a Douglas Adams or
Terry Pratchett book.

I know 3 or 4 People who read it, they all loved it, but it's virtually
unknown.

------
mLuby
_A Reverence for Wood_ by Eric Sloane.

Accomplished its eponymous goal in a brief 110 pages, many of which are
beautiful lithographic sketches.

------
travmatt
“Huey Long” by T. Harry Williams. The politician who very well could have
defeated Roosevelt and the loose inspiration behind Upton Sinclair’s “It Can’t
Happen Here”.

“Reminisces of a Stock Operator” by Edwin Lefevre. Thinly veiled autobiography
of Jesse Livermore, a 1920/30’s trader and his experiences, including
foreseeing the crash of 1929.

~~~
bookofjoe
"All The King's Men," Robert Penn Warren's fictionalized treatment of Huey
Long, is magnificent.

------
galimaufry
_The Bachelors_ by de Montherlant. About two socially isolated impoverished
turn-of-the-century aristocrats. The plot is very bitter and the main
characters are awful people so you'd expect it to be fairly cynical, but it
isn't at all, really sympathetic in fact. The narration is insightful and
hilarious.

------
seshagiric
Two books on improving your thinking skills:

1\. Super Thinking - Lauren McCann and Gabriel Weinberg (DuckDuckGo)

2\. Thinking Strategically - Avinash Dixit

------
carapace
"Neurospeak" by Robert Masters

A psychoactive book, science-based (YMMV).

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/897536.Neurospeak](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/897536.Neurospeak)

\- - - -

Gurdjieff's "Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson"

Impossible to categorize, incredibly challenging. Gurdjieff was a genius on
the level of Leonardo da Vinci, but where Leonardo studied the outer world,
Gurdjieff studied the inner world. This three-volume tome is his effort to
encode and transmit his particular school of thought.

Gurdjieff has had a deep and obscure influence on Western culture. For
example, in the Monty Python's Flying Circus movie "The Meaning of Life" an
abridged description of his philosophy is given in the boardroom scene about
the meaning of life, right before Terry Jones asks, "What was that about
hats?"

~~~
peignoir
Gurdjieff the cult leader / charlatan? Who used to paint birds in yellow to
sell them as canaries?
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gurdjieff](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gurdjieff)

I agree he is brilliant but at the same level as the founder of the
Scientology or other cult leaders who became awfully rich

Talking about a good book to read on cults / religion :

[https://infidels.org/library/historical/unknown/three_impost...](https://infidels.org/library/historical/unknown/three_impostors.html)

~~~
qwerty456127
IMHO it doesn't matter much who the author of a book was and what other things
did he do if you can extract useful information from the book. What if Charles
Ponzi himself would have personally invented a (real) cure for cancer or
something before he died? Would we dismiss it just because he was a
professional charlatan? I believe we would rather rest it to actually find out
whether it works or doesn't.

~~~
oska
> What if Charles Ponzi himself would have personally invented a (real) cure
> for cancer or something before he died?

This is a pretty strained argument. The much more likely scenario would have
been Ponzi _claiming_ that he had invented a cure for cancer and, given his
history of gross fraudulent behaviour, would rightfully be ignored as a
sensational claim being made by a known huckster.

~~~
qwerty456127
It seems to me that ignoring the claim would be irrational unless checking it
is not extremely hard. The fact a claim is made by a known huckster affects
our perception but says nothing about whether it is true or false. Outside
purely theoretical exercises in logic, there are no liars who are guaranteed
to lie in every single claim they make.

------
sukh
White by Kenya Hara [1]

A brain reboot. If you're into design or a minimal lifestyle or want to be
inspired before creating a new thing. Easy to read.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/White-Kenya-
Hara/dp/3037781831](https://www.amazon.com/White-Kenya-Hara/dp/3037781831)

------
james_s_tayler
Sleight of Mouth.

It's an NLP book unlike any other. It presents 12 (if I recall correctly)
patterns of speech that are highly effective at changing people's perception
of something. It's just super practical and really helped me out when I read
it close to a decade ago. Never heard anyone else bring mention it.

------
yepitsmeleaf
Some of my favorite obscure books are

-What Not by Rose MACAULAY (all caps just because I pasted it). It's a dystopian future book written during WW1. I've read that it's a inspiration for clockwork orange, 1984, and brave new world but much less well known. To be honest I find that it's the most relatable of all those dystopian books.

-The Story of B By Daniel Quinn (also My Ishmael and Ishmael but less well known then those). They represent a fundamentally different way of viewing the world we inhabit.

-The Foxes Of Harrow By Frank Yerby (Idk how well known it is though). This one is like those classic English lit books but focused on an enterprising Irish charlatan who goes down to New Orleans to build a life in the years leading up to the civil war.

------
kseistrup
Bill Harvey: Mind Magic ⌘ [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3573948-mind-
magic](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3573948-mind-magic)

Make sure you get one of the older editions with mind drills in it.

------
uncle_j
Jaron Lanier's You are not a Gadget. It really changes your ideas about
software and I really wish people would read it. Especially regarding Open
source and regarding design.

Keep in mind It isn't a programming book though and it really shouldn't be
read as one.

------
LargoLasskhyfv
An alternate history novel by Kim Stanley Robinson:

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

Wherin the plague eliminates almost everyone in medieval Europe, thereby
eliminating 'colonisation'.

Painting development of the world from there, up until around now. Showing to
me how arbitrary much of the world as we know it is.

Not necessarily better, just like: _' Same shit, but different.'_

(Even a little educational for real world history and geographic knowledge,
because i've read it with maps and wikipedia open, and learned more of all the
'*stans' that way.)

------
TomWhitwell
Bad Boy of Music by George Anthiel. You know how Hedy Lamarr invented spread
spectrum radio in the 1940s? George Anthiel was the avant-garde composer she
did it with. This is an amazing book, full of incredible stories but very hard
to find.

------
ficklepickle
From Nut House to Castle: The Eddy Haymour Story

Non-fiction

Story of a guy with a dream, screwed over by the government. His cousin storms
the Canadian embassy in Beirut, demanding Eddy get his day in court. He does,
and prevails.

Crazy story that occurred where I grew up, however it was before my time. I
had driven past this "castle" a hundred times before I found this book. Every
copy is signed by the author.

Here is a recent article detailing the story:
[https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/history/eddy-haymour-
ratt...](https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/history/eddy-haymour-rattlesnake-
island-1946164)

------
phubbard
“Finite and infinite games” by James Carse. Philosophy and hugely thought
provoking.

~~~
tw1010
I'm hearing this advice so often that it's pissing me off.

The book is BS. (I've read it.) There, I said it. It's always "this book is
hugely thought provoking" (pointing at you Daniel Gross), and never ever and
expansion on why or what insights it actually contains that's interesting. It
has mildly interesting sentences that feels deep (mostly because they're
confusing). The book has developed into some BS signalling device like
Infinite Jest used to be. Everyone has read it, no one understands it.
Everyone goes "oh yes, that's such a deep book, nothing has changed my mind
like it since sapiens", and then we're all supposed to go silent to
independently ponder it's many layered-ness, but in reality that's just what
we do because we wouldn't come up anything remotely insightful if pushed into
a corner. Frankly, the fact that this book is pushed so much makes me totally
reconsider oft-repeated meme that "tech is low virtue signalling" (or low
corruption). Clearly not.

(There, rant over. I'm overplaying how mad I actually am, I just feel like we
need a few more rants against this book strewn about whenever this book is
mentioned. Please, anyone, prove me wrong and a horrific narrow-minded dimwit
by writing something more in-depth about what you think it contains and how
it's insightful, I would love you infinitely.)

~~~
prepend
For me, I’ve found the book useful in understanding activities in a way that
reduces my stress and helps me interact with people. Specifically, I don’t
take things as seriously and try not to get wound up in arbitrary or not
important rules. And that I get that some people get into the rules of an
activity when I haven’t and that helps me understand where they are coming
from.

I suppose there are many ways to learn that, but, for me, it was this book.
The lesson helped me a lot.

And it’s really short book so I don’t feel so guilty recommending it. Brothers
Karamazov is amazing, but recommending it is like giving someone a job.

~~~
Pamar
I tend to fall in the "disappointed" set about this one. It is short, but 1/3
into it I realized that the author is basically rephrasing the same concepts
over and over and over.

Does it changes abruptly after the second half? I'll probably never know.

------
rglover
It's made the rounds but The Courage to Be Disliked has been my go-to
recommendation for the last year.

It fundamentally changed the way I look at the world and helped me to get
unstuck from some serious mental and emotional shortcomings.

------
HedgedHuman
Dropping Ashes on the Buddha

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/152640.Dropping_Ashes_on...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/152640.Dropping_Ashes_on_the_Buddha)

Paraphrasing what one reviewer said on GR, it's a good read if you are taking
life too seriously, or, the complete opposite.

I didn't get it the first time I read it.

I do find myself going back to the riddles and the poems in the essays now and
then when I feel I'm stuck, blocked, or trapped in a loop. It made me ... more
humble?

Also a good read if you just want to learn more about Korean Buddhism and
Kong-an's in general.

~~~
chewxy
Just an add on: kong-an and koans are similar things. Kong-an is the Chinese
and Korean pronunciation of koan.

It means "public question" literally but is traditionally used in contexts of
Buddhism

------
analogtom
Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants. by John D. Clark

"And even when it was successfully completed, the peroxide would still
decompose slowly; not enough to start a runaway chain reaction, but enough to
build up an oxygen pressure in a sealed tank, and make packaging impossible.
And it is a nerve-wracking experience to put your ear against a propellant
tank and hear it go "glub" —long pause — "glub" and so on. After such an
experience many people, myself (particularly) included, tended to look
dubiously at peroxide and to pass it by on the other side."

------
ecdavis
Life Beyond Earth by Feinberg & Shapiro. A really interesting examination of
what alien life might look like, where and how it could arise. Explores
fascinating concepts like life inside of a sun. Made me feel like alien life
is most likely unrecognizable to humans as life. I think it's out of print, I
got a second hand copy off Amazon (or maybe eBay).

The Manual by Cauty & Drummond. Funny, short, surprisingly insightful. A step-
by-step method on making a #1 hit song. The authors had a #1 shortly before
writing this book, and a few years afterwards. Can be found on archive.org.

------
ctrager
"Mating" by Norman Rush. Fiction. I think the Amazon review has it right: "Had
Jane Austen been in the Peace Corps in Africa in the 1980s, Mating is the book
she might have written."

~~~
jonjacky
Also his earlier short story collection "Whites" and his later novel
"Mortals", both set in the same part of Africa as "Mating", are excellent.

------
eyegor
Steal this book, by Abbie Hoffman [0]. Certainly not unknown, but not exactly
something you find by accident. It's a book detailing 60s counterculture
activities, and took a lot of work to find a publisher. Really interesting
look back on history at general creative problem solving, and very
entertaining. The most common theme in the book is "how to do x, for free".

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steal_This_Book](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steal_This_Book)

------
neplus
Depends on your definition of practically unknown. With that said, these are
the four that immediately spring to mind as being both worth reading and
relatively obscure (judging by date of publication in conjunction with being
either out of print or with very few star ratings on Amazon).

Did Monetary Forces Cause the Great Depression? - Peter Termin, 1975

Termin is still going strong at MIT. His 1975 book was foundational for
challenging Friedman on the cause of the Great Depression. Given what was to
come in the 1980s this book quickly became overshadowed and destined for
obscurity. However, it still provides an appropriate, timely lens to analyze
monetary theory without the abstraction that has engrossed economics as of
late.

The Supreme Court in the American System of Government - Robert Jackson, 1955

A series of lectures created for a Harvard lecture series in 1954-55 by
Justice Jackson. He suddenly died before being able to deliver them, but they
were compiled in a book now out of print. Justice Jackson is widely regarded -
across the aisle - as one of the most brilliant legal writers of our time (or
perhaps of any time). While this book doesn't set out his entire judicial
philosophy, or even do what the title says due to his untimely death, it does
lay a valuable conception of the proper role of the SCOTUS within the
Republic. Also recommended, to see both his pen and intellect in action, are
his opinions in Korematsu v. United States and West Virginia State Board of
Education v. Barnette.

The Opium of the Intellectuals - Aron, 1955

Amazon does a better job of summarizing than I could off the top of my head,
so here you go: "Raymond Aron's 1955 masterpiece The Opium of the
Intellectuals, is one of the great works of twentieth- century political
reflection. Aron shows how noble ideas can slide into the tyranny of "secular
religion" and emphasizes how political thought has the profound responsibility
of telling the truth about social and political reality-in all its mundane
imperfections and tragic complexities."

An incredibly difficult read that is worth trying to get through. Brimming
with ideas and not without its own pitfalls. Tells the story of 20th Century
intellectual history and thought as well as any could, although in a rather
indirect way.

The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy and Caste in America (Aristocracy &
Caste in America) - Baltzell, 1987

I'll let Amazon summarize again: "This classic account of the traditional
upper class in America traces its origins, lifestyles, and political and
social attitudes from the time of Theodore Roosevelt to that of John F.
Kennedy. Sociologist E. Digby Baltzell describes the problems of exclusion and
prejudice within the community of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (or WASPs, an
acronym he coined) and predicts with amazing accuracy what will happen when
this inbred group is forced to share privilege and power with talented members
of minority groups."

My summary would be: what will happen (hypothetically, remember the date of
publication) when an ephemeral class (WASPs) suddenly disappear from their
previous pedestal of influence? Prescient, widely applicable to other
countries with their own quasi-classes, and deeply interesting for those less
familiar with the subject.

~~~
bordercases
These are some extremely timely books, can't help but think that was on
purpose or that you're simply good at keeping up!

~~~
neplus
Thanks very much. These were all read before the 2016 election, if that's what
you mean. I think they are important books for our times certainly though.

~~~
bordercases
USA seems like it's going to hit a crisis as fundamental productivity metrics
have split from stock valuations, in favor of stocks... either the Fed has
cracked the inflation nut with Modern Monetary Theory's promise of unlimited
liquidity or we're absolutely super-duper screwed.

------
zeristor
'The Extended Organism' by J Scott Turner

I've posted this repeatedly to these lists, but no one else is as enthused by
it.

From the GoodReads page:

"Can the structures that animals build--from the humble burrows of earthworms
to towering termite mounds to the Great Barrier Reef--be said to live? However
counterintuitive the idea might first seem, physiological ecologist Scott
Turner demonstrates in this book that many animals construct and use
structures to harness and control the flow of energy from their environment to
their own advantage."

~~~
crimsonalucard
I can see how this idea may seem novel to people who never thought about it on
their own or seen it in many other places, but the isomorphism between carbon
based life and its higher level ecosystem is not new. It also blurs the line
between life and systems that aren't alive... but you have to realize that
"life" is just a loaded word that mostly describes carbon based nano-machines.
The vagueness of the word "life" produces an illusion of the concept being
"interesting" when it is actually we ourselves who made up the word. I can
make up any arbitrary word and give it a vague definition but that only makes
the word itself interesting not the concepts it describes. Yes there is a
blurriness and conceptual interest between "life" and the "ecosystems" that
surrounds it, but this is only a property of the word "life" not of the
systems themselves which is basically just little nano machines increasingly
interacting with each other to form larger macro structures.

The highest level stuff I've seen about this topic is the Gaia hypothesis. The
creators of this theory managed to make it align with actual scientific
theories but I think the very creation of this theory was caused by the same
psychological trip up I described above. Yes life and ecosystem share an
interesting isomorphism but again I repeat that the interesting part is really
just a "linguistic" phenomenon.

~~~
derangedHorse
"The vagueness of the word "life" produces an illusion of the concept being
"interesting" when it is actually we ourselves who made up the word."

We make up all words and yet don't seem to find every word interesting.

"which is basically just little nano machines increasingly interacting with
each other to form larger macro structures."

I'm sure a lot of us would disagree with you downplaying how interesting most
people find that topic. A lot . of things can pretty much be described as
"little nano machines increasingly interacting with each other to form larger
macro structures".

If someone were to ask me "What's a computer?" I could technically respond
with "little nano machines increasingly interacting with each other to form
larger macro structures" lol

~~~
crimsonalucard
>We make up all words and yet don't seem to find every word interesting.

This is because many words are made up with a concrete meaning. Many made up
words with vague meanings inject a sort of false interest into things.
"Spirituality" for example.

>If someone were to ask me "What's a computer?" I could technically respond
with "little nano machines increasingly interacting with each other to form
larger macro structures" lol

I am not downplaying interest in the study of biology. I am downplaying the
fact that you can call an ant colony or the planet earth a living organism.
There is no real interest here as it is just a word.

The main difference between a computer and "life" is self replication and
natural selection. The added feature of evolution and self replication
promotes additional interest and it is not because of vague wording. The
delineation between a computer and "life" is utterly clear in this case.

Where it may become unclear is if one day we create machines that self
replicate. This may promote philosophical questions like "What is life?" My
point is that, the philosophical question is just contemplating a linguistic
phenomenon and is a pointless and delusional endeavor.

------
rjkennedy98
"The American Religion" by Harold Bloom. It blew my mind. Its a deeply
subjective book about our collective consciousness, as told by biographies of
the religious makers of America.

------
zeroonetwothree
The Uneasy Case for Progressive Taxation

If you think it’s “obvious” that progressive taxes are better/worse than flat
taxes this is an excellent look at the evidence which may make you less
confident.

~~~
tzs
If instead of doing one tax to cover your whole budget, you do it is separate
taxes for each item applied serially [1], and each of those taxes is a flat
rate tax [2] that applies to income above a base amount [3], so that you are
paying thousands of separate taxes, each with a very low flat rate, then when
you look at the net result it is equivalent to a progressive bracket system
with a lot of narrow brackets.

That probably says something interesting about the relationship of flat rate
tax systems (as usually proposed) and progressive rate tax systems, although
I'm not sure what.

[1] What I mean by "applied serially" is you take you income, and apply the
first tax. Your income minus the tax amount becomes the income for the second
tax, and so on.

[2] I say "flat rate" rather than simply "flat" because almost no one ever
actually proposes a flat tax, which would be the same tax amount regardless of
income.

[3] ...which makes it not really a flat rate, but rather a progressive tax
with two brackets. I think that every serious "flat" tax proposal I've seen
has been this way, so that's what I'm using.

------
arminiusreturns
Trying to think about the future of warfare and the nation state, I picked up
this gem that was hiding in a voluminous tome: _The Shield of Achilles: War,
Peace, and the Course of History_ by Philip Bobbitt

It had so many implications, especially about the future emergence and
dominance of the "market state" that I couldn't stop thinking about
Neuromancer et al.

Another gem I have found myself rereading more than once, is _Nature 's God:
The Heretical Origins of the American Republic_ by Matthew Stewart.

------
thrwaway69
Suicide notes by Mitchell Heisman. Pretty obscure. No idea whether to call it
good or odd. It raises many questions without answers and will probably tell
you that the author likely has some deep rooted issues.

Book:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20151123024834/http://www.geenst...](https://web.archive.org/web/20151123024834/http://www.geenstijl.nl/archives/images/suicide_note.pdf)

------
johncoltrane
_When Prophecy Fails. A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group that
Predicted the Destruction of the World_ by Leon Festinger, Hank Riecken, and
Stanley Schachter. I have no idea if it's popular or not but it certainly is
fascinating.

A small cult is growing around a woman who claims that the world will end at a
specific date and that some will be saved in a specific way. When the date
comes and there's neither end of the world nor saving, how will the group
react?

~~~
monkeycantype
This book is my go to citation on agile as a Multi Level Marketing culture

------
hgal
Voyage to Kazohinia by Sándor Szathmári. I guess it's fairly unknown outside
Hungary. Published first in the forties it's still my favourite
utopia/dystopia.

------
sah2ed
Two books first published in the 60s:

“The Science of The Artificial” by Herbert Simon, a multi-disciplinary
treatise on the goals of _design_ by practitioners in the physical sciences
(physics, bio. etc), non-physical sciences (math, comp. sci, etc) and
humanities (econs., psych., etc).

“The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” by Thomas Kuhn, coined the concept
of paradigm shift and used it to revisit the history of science that was
previously thought to be cumulative and linear.

~~~
ska
Fwiw, I don't think the Kuhn qualifies as 'unknown'.

~~~
sah2ed
Granted.

I must have mentally parsed the “unknown” used by OP as “not widely known” (to
the HN crowd), and if you look at a lot of the contributions, many of the
authors are not exactly “unknown” either.

~~~
ska
Fair enough. Very specifically I think that book is pretty standard reading
for anyone interested in epistemology of science - but that doesn't mean it is
generally known.

I read the original as looking for books that are good in subject X, but not
well known in that subject area.

------
nealabq
The Diary of Opal Whiteley, written around 1910 by an observant child using
unusual syntax. It's poetic, simple, brilliant. I first saw it in the
Multnomah (Portland Oregon) library.

Available online: [http://www.opalonline.org/](http://www.opalonline.org/)

Wikipedia:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opal_Whiteley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opal_Whiteley)

------
claudeganon
From the perspective of literature, there was a whole, great, long-standing
blog devoted to this subject:

[https://writersnoonereads.tumblr.com/](https://writersnoonereads.tumblr.com/)

The best publishing house for this kind of work is Wakefield Press:

[https://www.wakefieldpress.com/](https://www.wakefieldpress.com/)

Personal recommendations:

“The Tanners” by Robert Walser or “The Book of Monelle” by Marcel Schwob

------
abtinf
Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology has radically changed my view of
almost everything, including software development. I’m able to cut through a
lot of controversial issues by using its methods to ask incisive questions.

[https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Objectivist-
Epistemology...](https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Objectivist-Epistemology-
Expanded-Second/dp/0452010306)

------
neitsab
"The Shamanic Path to Quantum Consciousness: The Eight Circuits of Creative
Power" by Laurent Huguelit.

This book literally changed my life and set it on a very different course a
few years ago.

It builds upon the 8 circuit-brain model of Timothy Leary, to provide both a
_map_ (which is presented as such and not expounded so as to confuse it with
the reality it describes), and a _practice_ that is derived from classic,
western-compliant core shamanism, as formulated by the anthropologist Michael
Harner who created the _Foundation for Shamanic Studies_ (FSS) in the 80's,
practice which makes _testable_ the framework presented in the book (so it
remains quite pragmatic and not only theoretical), and provides the absolutely
delightful properties of:

\- not rejecting _any_ part or aspect of reality as we know it, so that
biology, emotions, the intellect, social life, sex, drugs, sports, science,
religions, yoga, meditation, nutrition, arts, quantum probabilities etc. all
have their place in this story;

\- doesn't paint itself as THE ONE AND ONLY valid view of reality, but instead
offers (and strongly recommend) to integrate and make your own life
experiences first class citizens and to adapt the discourse according to them,
thus completely reversing the usual pattern of those kind of "revelation"
books;

\- offers a very _coherent_ and inclusive perspective on reality, borrowing
concepts from the science of cybernetics to paint a picture of it in terms of
feedback loops that develops a new approach of the mind and its harmony,
relying on eight broadly defined "circuits" or "tracks" (like in a car engine)
and their interactive and dynamic play to provide fulfillment and as the
source to real life creativity...

It is not long but it is dense in content; there is no fluff, and I am fairly
certain that any competent hacker (in the broadest sense) with an open mind
will find a many very precious tools and ideas in it.

Amazon: [https://www.amazon.com/Shamanic-Path-Quantum-
Consciousness-C...](https://www.amazon.com/Shamanic-Path-Quantum-
Consciousness-Circuits/dp/1591431670) Official website:
[http://8circuits.org/ENGLISH/index_ENG.html](http://8circuits.org/ENGLISH/index_ENG.html)

------
marttt
"The Crisis of the Modern World" by René Guénon (1927), French mathematician
and metaphysicist.

Quoting Wikipedia, this book describes the "intellectual divide" between the
East and West, and the peculiar nature, according to him, of modern
civilization." [1]

1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Gu%C3%A9non](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Gu%C3%A9non)

------
l0b0
*The Devil's Dictionary[1] by Ambrose Bierce, a collection of sarcastic definitions, some of which are still funny today:

> LOGIC, n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the
> limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.

> SELF-EVIDENT, adj. Evident to one's self and to nobody else.

[1] [http://thedevilsdictionary.com/](http://thedevilsdictionary.com/)

~~~
fao_
I managed to find a beautiful binding of this book in a small case with a
marbled cover. It's something I take out and read now and then in small doses,
and almost always brings cheer. One of my favourite definitions is:

INTERREGNUM, n. The period during which a monarchical country is governed by a
warm spot on the cushion of the throne. The experiment of letting the spot
grow cold has commonly been attended by most unhappy results from the zeal of
many worthy persons to make it warm again.

and

INTERPRETER, n. One who enables two persons of different languages to
understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the
interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.

------
I_complete_me
Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down by J.E. Gordon. As an engineering
student I found the insights and examples in this book by an aeronautical
engineer helped me greatly in really understanding structures. Much better
than the dry academical treatises and obscure equations of the university
course I undertook. I highly recommend this for anyone interested in
understanding structures.

------
pattusk
Bergson's Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness

Not exactly unknown but Bergson isn't as fashionable as he used to be and
often derided for his belief in spiritualism and failure to understand
Einstein's relativity.

Yet I've always found his core argument about duration and science (that
science only measure discrete moments but never the full motion) has always
fascinated me.

------
ctrager
"House" by Tracy Kidder. It's non-fiction about the design and building of a
house, but it all transfers to software development.

------
bookofjoe
"The Five-Day Course in Thinking" — Edward de Bono (1967). Great challenging
fun.[https://www.amazon.com/Five-Day-Course-Thinking-
Edward-1967-...](https://www.amazon.com/Five-Day-Course-Thinking-
Edward-1967-06-01/dp/B01K3NI4TM/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1579490736&sr=1-1)

------
baruchel
Looking at the "Best Sellers Rank" of some famous website in order to figure
out if some of my ideas are actually forgotten or not... This helped
discarding some books (like "Roadside Picnic" or "Memoirs Found in a
Bathtub"). While not absolutely unknown, I would still suggest: "The
Rediscovery of Man" by Cordwainer Smith.

------
lappet
A Thousand Beginnings and Endings (1), a collection of 15 short stories, all
of them retellings of folk stories from South & East Asia

(1) [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072KDDXC8/ref=dp-kindle-
redirect?...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072KDDXC8/ref=dp-kindle-
redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)

------
leoc
I'm no expert myself, but: _An Introduction to Non-Classical Logic_ by Graham
Priest. [https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/an-introduction-to-
nonc...](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/an-introduction-to-nonclassical-
logic/61AD69C1D1B88006588B26C37F3A788E)

------
lemmonii
"The Revolutionary Phenotype" by Dr. Gariepy is a continuation of Dawkins
Selfish Gene and Extended Phenotype.

In it he explains the emergence of genetic layers, provides a theory on the
emergence of sex and lays out the best argument against gene editing to this
date. After reading this book I consider all of the major questions of
evolution answered.

------
copperx
The Eight Day of Creation. It's about the crazy race to discover DNA. It used
to be fairly well known in academic circles 40 years ago, but it is now
practically unknown. It's is an extremely well researched and told story. You
don't need to know anything about genetics or biology to follow it. I can't
recommend it enough.

------
imdhmd
Ammi: Letter to a democratic mother.

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3183562-ammi](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3183562-ammi)

I read this back in 2009 and remember it as a really interesting and important
book especially with the troubling political climate in India over the last
decade.

------
mjklin
_The Priceless Gift_ by Cornelius Hirschberg, a very down-to-earth book by a
man who gave himself an education by reading books on the New York subway.
Although a bit dated, it includes great recommendations on how and what to
read to become a widely read and curious person. Very motivating too!

~~~
heyhouletsgo
It sounds great by your description. Unfortunately I couldn't find any version
online, so far. I got interested because I have a pretty significant commute
now, that I use to read books. Would be interested in what he recommends!

~~~
mjklin
Here's a
[pdf]([https://www.dropbox.com/s/oca3awkis0ql830/book%20%20The%20Pr...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/oca3awkis0ql830/book%20%20The%20Priceless%20Gift.pdf?dl=0))

~~~
heyhouletsgo
Oh, I only saw this reply now! The link is dead, any chance you can upload it
again? Thanks in advance

~~~
mjklin
Sure, here you
[go]([https://www.dropbox.com/s/8d3ei2bojkvg69l/book%20%20The%20Pr...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/8d3ei2bojkvg69l/book%20%20The%20Priceless%20Gift.pdf?dl=0))

~~~
heyhouletsgo
got it, thanks so much!

------
bwb
"killer of men"

Fantastic historical fiction and the series is mind-blowing.
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GVFY6BM/ref=dp-kindle-
redirect?...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GVFY6BM/ref=dp-kindle-
redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)

------
WheelsAtLarge
"Twinkie, Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients Found in
Processed Foods Are Grown, Mined (Yes, Mined), and Manipulated into What
America Eats." by Steve Ettlinger

The book is a look at the way ingredients to everyday products are created.
It's both entertaining and eye-opening.

------
sunstone
Consilience by E.O Wilson should be more popular than it is. How to tell BS
from things that might be real.

------
kevinali1
Financier: The biography of Andre Meyer by Cary Reich. The book goes into the
beginnings and psychology of one of the most important investment bankers of
the 20th century. It also goes into great detail of the toxic nature of
banking and the Genesis of complexity in modern dealmaking.

------
dave333
The Naturalist On The River Amazons

[http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2440](http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2440)

Not exactly unkown since it has its own wikipedia article but definitely worth
reading, especially if you follow his journeys on Google maps.

------
supernikita
Morte d'Urban and Wheat that Springeth Green by J. F. Powers. Who could ever
imagine that I would thoroughly enjoy a book about Catholic priests who are
not even solving crimes? Subtle, funny, keen-eyed how America and its
practicioners of faith change after WW II.

------
jslove
Nice little book about betting, risk, math and computer programming.

[https://www.amazon.com/Calculated-Bets-Computers-Gambling-
Ma...](https://www.amazon.com/Calculated-Bets-Computers-Gambling-
Mathematical/dp/0521009626)

------
mam2
If you speak french only because there is sadly no english version :( :

[https://www.amazon.co.uk/Flash-Grand-Voyage-Ldp-
Litterature/...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Flash-Grand-Voyage-Ldp-
Litterature/dp/2253000140)

------
arikr
The married man sex life primer 2011 by Kay. Horrible title. Very useful book
for me as a husband.

~~~
heatherengland
what did you find most useful about it?

~~~
oska
Hmmmm... [1]

[1]
[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2170455672](https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2170455672)

------
dvfjsdhgfv
The Crystal and the Way of Light by Chögyal Namkhai Norbu. I had no idea that
in the heart of Tibetan Buddhism lies this this particular teaching, for
hundreds of years considered ultra-secret, but at the same time so directly
connected to our present situation.

~~~
willhslade
Can you elaborate re: present situation?

------
hackerbeat
Dirty Havana Trilogy by Pedro Juan Gutierrez - About the hardships of making
ends meet in Cuba.

------
domainkiller
The Universe in a Single Atom [https://www.amazon.com/Universe-Single-Atom-
Convergence-Spir...](https://www.amazon.com/Universe-Single-Atom-Convergence-
Spirituality/dp/0767920813)

------
nicholast
Check out "From the Diaries of John Henry", a collection of essays on material
like machine learning, quantum computing, and entrepreneurship.

[https://www.turingsquared.com](https://www.turingsquared.com)

------
jdkee
This title may be relatively well-known among the HN crowd, but Interface by
Stephen Bury aka Neal Stephenson is an amazingly prescient read. I find it
Stephenson's most insightful and critical work that reflects contemporary
America.

~~~
AlexCoventry
That's a favorite of mine.

------
mirimir
_You Can 't Win_ by Jack Black (1926) -- about crime and punishment

 _Of Captain Misson_ by Daniel Defoe (1728) -- about Libertatia

 _Drugs and Rights_ by Douglas N. Husak (1992)

 _Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World_ by David T.
Courtwright (2002)

------
orloffm
A Russian one - “Three Jews” by Muhin. Stupid title, but it’s an incredible
account of author’s life and work at a steel plant in Soviet Union in 70-80s.
Probably not translated, but highly recommended for all Russian speakers.

~~~
jchallis
Is that the same Muhin who is an avowed Anti-Semite ?

------
starpilot
V-2 by Walter Dornberger. About the WW2 missile development, Dornberger was
the program head. Vivid portrayal of wartime development, brutal office
politics (to say the least), and fairly in depth on the details of rocketry.

------
ctrager
"The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down", non-fiction, about the cultural
clash of modern American medicine and Hmong immigrants. The author
demonstrates an amazing amount of empathy for both sides.

------
injb
East and West by C. Northcote Parkinson. In fact, anything by Parkinson. It's
an alternative view on what causes empires to rise and fall.

The Snow Geese by William Fiennes....just for the sheer perfection of the
prose.

------
dredmorbius
In no particular order, and some of these being more "highly underrated" as
opposed to "unknown", with the notable exception of Smith's _Wealth of
Nations_ which is disturbingly un- and mis-read:

1\. _Grammatical Man,_ by Jeremy Campbell (1982)

[https://www.worldcat.org/title/grammatical-man-
information-e...](https://www.worldcat.org/title/grammatical-man-information-
entropy-language-and-life/oclc/856698430)

My introduction to information theory and its diverse set of interrelated
applications and phenomena.

2\. _Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity,_ by William Ophuls (1977)

[https://www.worldcat.org/title/ecology-and-the-politics-
of-s...](https://www.worldcat.org/title/ecology-and-the-politics-of-scarcity-
revisited-the-unraveling-of-the-american-dream/oclc/872523631)

Distills the _Limits to Growth_ issue to its essence, and looks at the
political implications, with a set of estimates of political developments
which have played out closely.

3\. _An Inquiry to the Nature and Wealth of Nations,_ by Adam Smith (1776)

[https://www.worldcat.org/title/inquiry-into-the-nature-
and-c...](https://www.worldcat.org/title/inquiry-into-the-nature-and-causes-
of-the-wealth-of-nations/oclc/1083940513)

The best-known, but least-read, and most mis-read book on this list. Smith
isn't perfect and has flaws. But his message is extraordinarily misunderstood
and misrepresented. Even where he is wrong, he is instructive.

4\. _Commercialism and Journalism,_ by Hamilton Holt (1909)

[https://www.worldcat.org/title/commercialism-and-
journalism/...](https://www.worldcat.org/title/commercialism-and-
journalism/oclc/639344712)

A short but extraordinarily illuminating read on the influence of money and
advertising on the press, coming near the beginning of the era of mass media.

5\. _Unix Power Tools,_ by Mike Loukides et al (1997)

[https://www.worldcat.org/title/unix-power-
tools/oclc/2584502...](https://www.worldcat.org/title/unix-power-
tools/oclc/258450296)

The book that really got me "over the hump" in understanding the Unix
environment and tools. Now somewhat dated, though still highly useful.

6\. _A Short History of Progress,_ by Ronald Wright (2004)

[https://www.worldcat.org/title/short-history-of-
progress/ocl...](https://www.worldcat.org/title/short-history-of-
progress/oclc/1089834019)

An exploration of the story, question, and future, of progress.

7\. _Entropy and the Economic Process,_ by Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen (1971)

[https://www.worldcat.org/title/entropy-law-and-the-
economic-...](https://www.worldcat.org/title/entropy-law-and-the-economic-
process/oclc/299362046)

A re-thinking of economics taking thermodynamics into account. Famously
difficult to read, but well worth the effort.

8\. _On the Damned Human Race,_ by Mark Twain (1962)

[https://www.worldcat.org/title/mark-twain-on-the-damned-
huma...](https://www.worldcat.org/title/mark-twain-on-the-damned-human-
race/oclc/950982242)

A darker, angrier, more bitter side of Twain, cracking open the sanitised
version those familiar with _Tom Sawyer_ and _Huck Finn_ will know, and giving
an insight to the darker side of late 19th and early 20th century America.

9\. _Energy and Civilization,_ by Vaclav Smil (2017)

[https://www.worldcat.org/title/energy-and-civilization-a-
his...](https://www.worldcat.org/title/energy-and-civilization-a-
history/oclc/1032365823)

A re-casting of history, not according to spiritual or cultural progress,
Great Men, or social dynamics, but the access to and utilisation of energy
sources.

10\. _Resistances to the Adoption of Technological Innovations,_ by Bernhard
J. Stern (1937)

[https://archive.org/details/technologicaltre1937unitrich/pag...](https://archive.org/details/technologicaltre1937unitrich/page/39)

A fascinating exploration of the organised opposition to numerous significant
technological innovations through the ages, contrary to the conventional story
told by mainstream economic and innovation models and stories. Stern's
research assistant at the time he was working on this topic went on to become
known as a science fiction author, and based one of his first works on this
notion: Isaac Asimov.

On the question of compiling such lists: I've recently started keeping a
research journal in which I'm trying to capture works of significance that
I've read, vaguely inspired by both index-card methods (such as Zettelkasten
or POIC) and bullet journals.

The organisation is "BOTI" \-- best of the interval.

I will start a two-page spread, dated, of a specific class of entries --
works, videos, authors, ideas, etc. -- and when that closes, start another.
Periodically (about every month, for now) I'll select the best of those works
for a BOTM list, and at the end of a year, a BOTY list.

Or at least that's the idea.

This may address the question of keeping track of the most significant works
(or authors, concepts, ideas, etc.) over time, which otherwise tend to become
a bit of a jumble.

The BOTI list and periodic aggregations themselves resemble round-robin
databases, or ring or circular buffers or files, though without actually
rewriting each specific list. The initial capture levels remain accessible (in
the journal) for revisiting, should something prove to have been more
significant on subsequent reflection than initially appeared.

~~~
willhslade
These sound incredible. Can I ask you to start a blog / podcast / Youtube
channel to distill your thoughts? It seems like you have a theme of exploring
economic history from an alternate explanation (energy) than what is commonly
thought (technological progress is an inevitable ratchet towards improvement).

------
intrepidhero
Goat Walking by Jim Corbett. Interesting musings on wild places, man's place
in them and finally his memories of the beginnings of the sanctuary movement
in the 80s. Very relevant to today.

------
hkai
Chinese Profiles

A collection of interviews with a hundred ordinary Chinese people in 1984

~~~
claudeganon
“Corpse Walker” by Liao Yiwu is a colorful (and most likely exaggerated)
corollary text.

------
reedwolf
The Invincible by Stanislaw Lem. Little known, even in Sci-Fi circles.

~~~
narag
I thought that we could see some reference to it after the first episode of
this year season of the Expanse, but then no.

------
andreskytt
Dom skital'tsev, Aleksandr Mirer. Can’t find an english translation having
been made. It’s a very nice Soviet sci-fi thing with a plot I have not really
seen anything similar to.

------
scottlocklin
Beyond Sing the Woods by Trygve Gulbranssen -something that won all kinds of
awards once upon a time, but which has been completely forgotten. What it
means to be human.

------
heatherengland
after spending all day coding and being deep in erlang, algorithms and bug
reports, i like to read something that doesn't require much thought. parodies
work great i find.

[https://www.amazon.com/Maze-Bummer-Parody-Runner-
ebook/dp/B0...](https://www.amazon.com/Maze-Bummer-Parody-Runner-
ebook/dp/B00QVQN7MU)

that's the kind of work i have in mind. simple and refreshing.

~~~
yepitsmeleaf
I think you would like The Story of B By Daniel Quinn and his other books.
They are light and fun, that one especially. Additionally allthough maybe a
little more involved Tom Robbins' books are in this vain as well.

------
clairity
i don't know how "unknown" it is, but i accidentally ran across the novel
_comfort woman_ by nora okja keller at the library a few years back and found
it heartbreaking, on a subject few americans know much about.

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/819654.Comfort_Woman](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/819654.Comfort_Woman)

------
me2i81
_Patterns in Network Architecture: A Return to Fundamentals_ by John Day.
There's not a lot of criticism of technology at this level.

------
Merrill
MEGAMISTAKES: Forecasting and the Myth of Rapid Technological Change by Steven
P Schnaars.

From '89, somewhat dated now, but still interesting.

------
ttctciyf
Severely underappreciated (IMO) is British psychiatrist Marion Milner's _A
Life of One 's Own_[1] (1934, as "Joanna Field") - an extraordinary recounting
of the author's subjective yet diligent observational study of her own
awareness and mental processes from first principles and with as few
assumptions as possible.

The results were unexpected!

> As soon as I began to study my perception, to look at my own experience, I
> found that there were different ways of perceiving and that the different
> ways provided me with different facts. There was a narrow focus which meant
> seeing life as if from blinkers and with the centre of awareness in my head;
> and there was a wide focus which meant knowing with the whole of my body, a
> way of looking which quite altered my perception of whatever I saw. And I
> found that the narrow focus way was the way of reason. If one was in the
> habit of arguing about life it was very difficult not to approach sensation
> with the same concentrated attention and so shut out its width and depth and
> height. But it was the wide focus way that made me happy.

The book is full of arresting and innovative insights on awareness and
perception. For example, the spotlight analogy for "covert attention" is often
attributed to Francis Crick writing in 1984[2], but fifty years earlier Milner
writes:

> At any moment there exist in the fringes of my thought faint patternings
> which can be brought to distinction when I look at them. Like a policeman
> with a flash-light I can throw the bright circle of my awareness where I
> choose; if any shadow or movement in the dim outer circle of its rays
> arouses my suspicion, I can make it come into the circle of brightness and
> show itself for what it is. But the beam of my attention is not of fixed
> width, I can widen or narrow it as I choose.[3]

On the topic of first person recountings of mental journeys, but from the
other side of the analyst's couch, it's also worth mentioning _Operators and
Things: The inner life of a schizophrenic_ [4] a powerful first person account
of schizophrenic hallucination and ideation which comes across a little more
like a novel than an objective account but is fascinating nonetheless.

1: [https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/10/11/a-life-of-ones-
own-...](https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/10/11/a-life-of-ones-own-joanna-
field-marion-milner/)

2: e.g. "(The analogy was first suggested by Francis Crick, the geneticist.)"
\- [https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/06/how-
cons...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/06/how-
consciousness-evolved/485558/?single_page=true)

3:
[https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ntg6OE7haSgC&pg=PA77](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ntg6OE7haSgC&pg=PA77)

4: Online at
[https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/13476](https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/13476)
it seems - I read it in paperback in the 80s and only turned that site up with
google just now, so ... but the PDF seems to work.

~~~
yesenadam
I came across _A Life Of One 's Own_ as a teenager, and she became one of my
heroes in courage and self-exploration, a great inspiration. The sequels _An
Experiment in Leisure_ and _On Not Being Able To Paint_ are also excellent.
_On Not Being Able To Paint_ initially didn't seem as interesting, but I
picked up my copy again 20 years later and found that what she'd learnt about
art was almost exactly what I'd learnt from 5 years of writing orchestral
music! It had gone over my head the first time.

~~~
ttctciyf
> she became one of my heroes

The book had a similar impact on myself & partner after we picked it up
randomly from a clearance box in a used book store.

The idea that truly owning one's life, thoughts, behaviour and so on is a
project to undertake - and not (as might be commonly assumed for successful
healthy indiviuals) an effortlessly given state of affairs - seems remarkable
for the time she was writing.

From that point of view, there's something singular about on the one hand her
observations being utterly unburdened by psychological theory and on the other
the scope of what she's attempting!

~~~
yesenadam
Awesome! :-) I often tell people about her, but have come across her mentioned
anywhere extremely rarely, hardly ever. I believe she was a trained
psychologist before she started those books! She realized all that training
had taught her nothing about herself, so set out to find out for herself.
There's a fascinating struggle between her 'trained expert' side yielding to
the 'naïve observer' side.

------
imgabe
Twistor and Einstein's Bridge. Both excellent hard sci-fi novels by John
Cramer, who's also a working physicist.

------
mikeymz
The Candlemass Road by George Mcdonald Fraser

------
jmpman
Although it was immensely popular in its time, I haven’t found anyone else who
has read it - “Memoirs of a British Agent”

------
futurecat
More Brilliant Than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction, by Kodwo Eshun.
Maybe the best take on Music and Afrofuturism.

------
dilyevsky
Mount Analogue by Rene Daumal is pretty cool and supposedly was an inspiration
for The Holy Mountain and Lost tv series

------
FranciscusG
"Matter, Space, Radiation" by Menahem Simhony.

It explains the Ether (EPOLA, Electron-Positron Lattice) and states the many
proofs for that, as well as explains many hitherto unexplained physics
phenomena such as Mass Inertia, the speed of light c, Gravity and the Pauli
Exclusion Principle.

You'd think the concept of "Ether" is debunked but after reading the book
you'll be convinced it is real.

------
werber
Last year I picked up this book Truckstop Rainbows, and it was great. Late
soviet angstsy gen x snapshot

------
dot1x
Rule your World! By Harry Browne - and all other Harry Browne books. Changed
the way I view the world.

------
dublin
If you like dogs at all, then "Cold Noses, Warm Hearts" is one of the best
short story anthologies ever.

Eddie Rickenbacker's autobiography is a pretty good story, too - it's hard to
believe one man could be so impactful in so many ways - he really had to fend
off people who wanted him to be president, and there's little doubt he would
have won if he'd run...

------
ranprieur
Gaiome by Kevin Scott Polk, about the potential for highly ecological
artificial worlds in space.

------
jtth
_The Retreat to Commitment_ by WW Bartley III is a book I think about almost
every day.

~~~
teamwork007
Why's that?

------
JVIDEL
Can't believe nobody has mentioned Blindsight yet.

Awesome scifi book, it will blow your mind.

------
embit
Lost in Mongolia: Rafting the World's Last Unchallenged River By Colin Angus

------
p1esk
Can you say more about the harmony book? What did you like about it?

------
justinko
_Sex at Dawn_ and _Civilized to Death_ by Christopher Ryan

------
_eht
The Master & Margarita

Mikhail Bulgakov

------
jeromebaek
the economy of literature, marc shell. it gives you a semiotics of money, a
way of understanding money qualitatively. it has been 100x more valuable than
any economics textbook.

------
qbaqbaqba
Beasts, Men and Gods by Ferdynand Antoni Ossendowski.

------
ncphillips
Are Your Lights On? by Gerald Weinberg

------
gleb
Felix Zandman NEVER THE LAST JOURNEY

And unusual combination of start up story and Holocaust survivor story.

[https://www.amazon.com/dp/0805241280/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_8V...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0805241280/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_8VpjEb3PJRDBR)

------
fao_
I Am A Strange Loop by Hofstadter. The book he wrote many years before, GEB,
is well-known. However, he was frustrated that so many people didn't get what
he was trying to convey, so he took the central point and distilled it into
another book. It's a really, really good read.

~~~
corysama
Even with GEB he had to add a “This is the central point: __ __*” to a preface
in a later printing.

------
__s
On Unnatural Authority

------
unusximmortalis
The Book of Mirdad

------
ctdonath
The Eudaemonic Pie - first major attempt to beat Las Vegas (roulette) with
concealed computers.

You Can’t Do Business With Hitler - contemporary analysis of the downfall of
German economy before WWII.

Planiverse - think Flatland with a deeper plot and a computer interface.

------
breck
My father Marconi.

------
MoZeus
The Dork of Cork by Chet Raymo. You're welcome.

------
hogFeast
Engines that move markets by Alisdair Nairn

------
akeck
"The Eleven Laws of Showrunning" by Javier Grillo-Marxuach

------
TheGallopedHigh
Stoner by John Williams. It is a slow burner, but it’s worth the effort. It’s
novel about an average person living an average life, but the prose captures
the emotion of life.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoner_(novel)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoner_\(novel\))

~~~
neonate
That book is very widely known.

~~~
TheGallopedHigh
Apologies

~~~
neonate
No need to apologize. You were right in one way. It was an unknown book for
many years until it somehow got rediscovered and turned into what many regard
as a classic.

------
Animats
"Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" (1841). See all
the large-scale scams in their original forms.

------
crimsonalucard
Systems of Survival by Jane Jacobs.

She comes up with an elegant social theory behind the nature of corruption.

We know on a certain level why people can be seduced by corruption, but she
introduces a higher level concept that describes why entire civilizations can
be corrupt.

The book is really short as her theory is quite elegantly explained in a short
dialogue between intellectuals.

------
gargarplex
Hopefully this is not a submarine for Scribd- the only location where I could
legally find a pdf! :). The library system appears to have copies as well.
I’ve always wanted to really learn music theory, but it’s gonna have to wait
til I really learn Leetcode algos, my primary goal for this year.

My contribution:

Richard Dawkins called Julian Jaynes's 1976 book, _The Origin of Consciousness
in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind_ , “either complete rubbish or a work
of consummate genius”

~~~
bogoman
Haha, no, though it would have been an impressive submarine. I have a low
quality copy I could share. If you do happen to go through the book and have
questions/want to discuss it with someone, feel free to contact me! my twitter
is in the profile.

------
alexashka
I'm reading through Behave by Robert M. Sapolsky.

It's a science based look at human behaviour. It's not light reading but it's
not a textbook either, it's in-between.

This book will remain unknown just by the virtue of it's weight - this is not
'how to feel better by meditating 10 minutes a day' pop psychology pamphlet,
this will take some work to get through :)

~~~
yesenadam
I watched his 25-part Biology of Human Behavior (Stanford U.) course years
ago, it's the best course I've ever done. Maybe covers a lot of the same
ground. He's a great lecturer! Very funny and a great storyteller. There's a
lot on how brains work, how genes work, and then all the levels science
studies human (and animal) behaviour - e.g. "Why did they do that?" can be
explained by what happened a millisecond ago, or a few seconds ago, or that
morning, or .. (a dozen levels omitted) ... millions of years ago.

Lecture I
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA)

------
pascalxus
I just recently read, "Harry Potter A Sorcerers stone". I must say, it's
really good.

