Ask HN: What are the most thought-provoking books that you have read? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What are the most thought-provoking books that you have read?

40 pointsjohnhkg28 comments

David Simon's "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets"

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18956.Homicide

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

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

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

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

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

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

* Everything on this list: http://jakeseliger.com/2010/03/22/influential-books-on-me-th....

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

* Blindsight by Peter Watts.

* Heart of Darkness by Conrad, who seems more prophetic all the time.

I was about to add Blindsight to my own list, but you beat me to it. I think it's the best book with the worst synopsis on the jacket.

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

Some good stuff there indeed. The Game, Predictably Irrational, The Mating Mind, and Lord of the Rings stand out to me as excellent suggestions. I'm just now starting book 12 of Jordan's Wheel of Time series, and while I've enjoyed it so far, I'm not sure I'd cite it as "thought provoking". Entertaining, yes, and certainly worth reading, but the series doesn't stand out to me in that way.

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

The Selfish Gene - Dawkins

A New Kind of Science - Wolfram

The Singularity is Near - Kurzweil

Gödel, Escher, Bach - Hofstadter

Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies - Hofstadter

Atlas Shrugged - Rand

The Fountainhead - Rand

Nineteen Eighty-Four - Orwell

The Trouble With Physics - Lee Smolin

Time Reborn - Lee Smolin

Ambient Findability - Peter Morville

Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software - Steven Johnson

Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age - Duncan Watts

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

Artificial Life - Steven Levy

The Four Steps To The Epiphany - Steve Blank

The World is Flat - Thomas Friedman

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

Glasshouse - Charles Stross

Permutation City - Greg Egan

Neuromancer - William Gibson

The Shockwave Rider - John Brunner

The Society of Mind - Marvin Minsky

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

The Black Swan - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Fooled By Randomness - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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

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

Times change, people do not

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

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

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

Nine Hundred Grandmothers, by R.A. Lafferty (out of print except for "The Books of Sand")

Last and First Men, by Olaf Stapledon, free at http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2028/last-and-first-men

Accelerando, by Charles Stross, free at http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelera...

The Doubter's Companion, by John Ralston Saul, http://www.amazon.com/The-Doubters-Companion-Dictionary-Aggr...

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

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

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

"Chaos",James Gleick

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

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

A tudatállapotok szivárványa by Andrew Feldmar

How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World by Harry Browne

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

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

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky

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

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

Books by Bradbury Books by asimov

Just starting Antifragile and it might make the list

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

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

* The One Thing By Gary Keller and Jay Papasan

* Soft Skills By John Sonmez

Principles of Mathematical Analysis by Walter Rudin

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

Cosmos by Carl Sagan

arcology : city in the image of man

My two cents:

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

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

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

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

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

> we may have already talked about this..

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

Democracy: The God That Failed by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Big Bang, Simon Singh The Trial, Franz Kafka

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

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