Ask HN: Book recommendations for worldly knowledge?

3 points·adam419··4 comments

I'm in my 20's and think at particularly this age as well as all that learning outside ones domain is something very valuable to becoming well-rounded.

With that said, does anyone have any book recommendations OUTSIDE the area of programming and science that was particularly memorable for you to help widen your perspectives?

Thanks to anyone with suggestions. -Adam

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You could do worse than: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Classics

They're all available for free on archive.org

https://archive.org/details/harvardclassics

I will recommend a pair of books that are about the question you are asking: http://shop.nplusonemag.com/collections/books-n-1/products/w... http://shop.nplusonemag.com/collections/books-n-1/products/n...

Anything by R.A. Lafferty, whose fiction is a gateway to thousands of eclectic books from his library. Most of his work is out of print, but a collection of his short stories ("Talled Tales") is online. A few stories are on the web, http://www.ralafferty.org/works/collections/online-stories/

I have been reading and enjoying The Story of Civilization by Will Durant. It's not 100% up-to-date, but it's beautifully written and has lots of Durant's wisdom and observations in it. I often find myself wanting to write down and save passages because they are such concise, insightful, and poetic observations about humanity.

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