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Comment by chadash | Hacker News Reader

No one reads Origin of Species either. I’ll bet that there’s a 100 to 1 ratio of people who have heard of Darwin’s book versus those who have read it. Same goes for many important (or at least influential) books. Mein Kampf, Das Capital and Newton’s Principia are a few more that come to mind.

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The ratio is much, much larger. Darwin's book is not an easy read but luckily you don't need to read Darwin's book, Almost like a Whale by Steve Jones is an excellent rewrite of it. Chapter by chapter, the same arguments are presented but where Darwin could only guess, Jones could rely on genetics and other advances in sciences.

Newton’s Principia is totally and absolutely impossible to understand to the average curious person raised on Cauchy and Weierstrass. There was a course at university aimed at people with advanced math knowledge to prepare you to read it.

People who want a deeper understanding of the related fields do read these. Furthermore, to reiterate the GP's reaction to GGP's sentiment about few reading them, their readership or lack thereof is not a variable in the question of their value. We can speak to many technical guides that would increase people's productivity if they only read them.

Popularity is more a question of marketability, especially in the dire non-fiction category. Reading is a secondary use for most of these books, and it makes it even harder to discern which lifestyle books are resume-padding filler or truly generalizable advice.

Darwin is far more readable than any of the others you mention.

Possibly Mein Kampf could compete in short passages by a "reading difficulty" score, but it's really tedious and much longer (by a factor of 5!). Darwin could actually write. Origin of Species was intended for the educated public as well as for scientists.

> No one reads Origin of Species either.

Hold on, hold on.

I started to read Origin of Species.

One time. But I did read it. Not all. Unconvincing.

And I did read all of Gabriel Marcel's Metaphysical Journal. So ... not a matter of Slack. If one in 100 reads Origin that's a rough approximation to the number of masochists

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