The Story of Civilization; 11 volumes of pure joy. Will and Ariel Durant will make you fall in love with mankind. The most humanist take on history I have read. I read them over 6 years and I still live under the Durants' spell. Exquisite and delightful read.
Muqadimat Ibn Khaldun. History, Sociology, Political Science, Scientific Empiricism, Theology, Superstition, Gossip, Leadership, Trivia .. it's everything. It feels like a collaboration between the Grim brothers, Karl Marx, Douglas Adams and Plato. People well versed in Islamic history will get the most out of it. It's a book written by a scientist for a religious and superstitious audience. You can see him walk the fine line, appeasing his princely sponsors while speaking his mind. It's full of code-language written for a better enlightened generation while accommodating the religious and cultural beliefs of his era. Read his biography and you should see bits and pieces of Rousseau; a hypocritical, pan-handling snob who makes his living saying one thing, and living his life doing another .. while still being a fucking genius :-D
Muqadimat Ibn Khaldun. You make this book seem very interesting. Based on your description and explanation of it, I think many people from outside the Islamic culture might find this book fascinating (buy a copy) if it came with a running dialog inserted into the text as needed that explained the history and cultural beliefs of that time. Might be a best seller in the west.
Albert Hourani's History of the Arab Peoples cites Ibn Khaldun and covers much the same territory of Islamic history. A read I would highly recomment to anyone.
you should probably try guns germs and steel by jared diamond, it also is a different way to look at history and how and why it has spanned the way it has over different geographies.
I only read technical and business material, I love this type of stuff.
1. The Windows 3.1 manual. A hardcopy in a small grey ring binder that shipped with the operating system when I bought it new. I read it cover to cover to cover 3 times because I wanted to know everything about it. I kept thinking this is a lot like UNIX but nicer to use except for the fact that it had less features than UNIX. Every time I re-read the manual I would think of new things I wished it would do! Which lead me to examine--every--file in the operating system looking for a way to make it better, until Windows 95 came out, lol.
2. EMC Retrospect for Windows Users Guide. I read it cover to cover twice (it’s a 300 page pdf). It is my absolute favorite. If you ever want to learn about backup, this is a great read. Pure tech stuff, no fluff. Here is link if anyone is interested, it’s free: http://www.retrospect.com/assets/en_rug_win75.pdf
It has changed my life. For the last two years I have endeavoured to simplify my thoughts/ideas, so they can be communicated precisely. It's hard, painful work.
That aim has recoloured my being: music; literature; art. Philip Glass. Hemingway. Mondrian.
Elements of Style, is well written and thoughtful, but it should not be taken as an prescriptive authority - as it commonly is - on grammatical minutiae. Or in other words Strunk & White, a.k.a Drunken Shite (only when discussing grammar rules!!).
House of Leaves - What literature should be. Innovative both in design and in prose. It's very long but you can finish it in a maddening evening, it's hilarious, it's terrifying. Along with Steven King's It, one of two books to give me nightmares. Incredibly complex. It's a puzzle I still haven't fully solved. I consider it the first modern-era novel, and expect others will come like it. When I wrote a novel a year and a half ago, its design was my greatest inspiration.
Finnegans Wake - This book can't be explained until you've seen it. The pinnacle of the English language.
I would argue that Stephen King's 'It' should also have the status of a great novel.
One French critic wrote of 'It':
«Ça» fonctionne parce que «Ça» fait peur. Pendant plus de mille pages – Jean-Pierre Dufreigne, L'Express
Translation: 'It' works because "It" scares. Throughout over one thousand pages.
How wrong can a critic be?
Yes the horror element is great but it's not why 'It' works at all, not for me anyway. For me 'It' works because of its insights into human nature – it's use of fantasy to look unflinchingly at human nature at it's worst and it's most beautiful, to do justice to a world that is full of both evil and goodness, because every story overlaps with other stories overlapping with other stories, just like real life, because it's a morally uncompromising book which presents no hard and fast rules of morality, because it portrays children and childhood accurately, because it shows us a world where abuse, neglect and apathy are rife, come in many forms, and can be perpetrated by people for all kinds of reasons, sometimes wilfully, sometimes from neediness, sometimes from a self-deluded sense of righteousness, sometimes from lack of knowing anything better. Because it also writes about the power of love and the deep bonds people share without a shred of sentimentality. Because it's a fantasy, and yet it shows our world perhaps more accurately than any story I've ever read, watched or heard.
I particularly loved the theme of standing up to oppressors. Many stories have this element, but 'It' is so true to reality that the standing-up is more inspiring and powerful than in other works. Typically however, King has the wisdom to have a side-plot which shows how standing up to oppressors can go wrong, by way of brutal vigilantism and bloody revenge. It's this steadfast refusal to accept clichés and black-and-white worldviews of any kind which I particularly appreciate in King.
I don't know, maybe the best thing about it is that makes a giant telepathic space turtle seem like a perfectly plausible part of a novel characterized by gritty realism.
My second, not entirely unrelated, nomination is 'Psychology is About People' by HJ Eysenck. This is half a century old so I am sure there are now many better books saying much the same thing. But for me it was the culmination of a train of thought, which started when I came across the quote "wisest is she who knows she does not know" in Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World , which made me realize how little I know and how important it is to identify and question my own assumptions.
Psychology is About People is an attack on fuzzy thinking in the fields of public policy-making, social science and, above all, psychology (Eysenck was himself a psychologist). He demonstrates that pyschotherapy, at least in his time, was little more than storytelling which, when held up to the hard light of the experimental method, was almost always proven false. Likewise, he attacks governments for basing their social policies on similarly unexamined assumptions. These fields, especially psychology have all come a long way since Eysenck's time but it's still very easy to spot the kind of fuzzy thinking and refusal-to-question-assumptions everywhere you look.
I disagree with Eysenk in some of the conclusions he makes from his own research, but I think his general approach to knowledge and truth is fantastic. It certainly changed the way I think and has effected in me a permanent distaste for 'meta-narratives' of all kinds.
Unalone's enjoyment of Finnegans Wake notwithstanding, deciphering the footnotes and expository ultimately doesn't have the upside that learning the English of Shakespeare and Chaucer do.
I'd suggest readers try Joyce's wonderful short stories, then making an assault on Ulysses. Nabokov, a Joyce admirer, called Wake, "that petrified superpun."
Also great fun to read on crowded trains here in japan - a lot of curious stares when you have to start turning the book sideways and upside down to read it :)
I bought Hackers thinking it was about crackers (which my 16 year old script kiddie self was very interested in) but ended up reading it cover to cover and it helped me realize that real programming and hacking was much cooler than cracking some system ever would be.
The Man Who was Thursday by GK Chesterton....very well written allegorical spy novel.
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas... I'm a sucker for a good plot and this has always been a favorite of mine since I first read it in 5th grade.
Shogun, James Clavell - read it when I was 9 or so, put me on the course to live and work in Japan. Has obvious faults but changed my life at an early age.
The Brother's Karamazov. Pleasantly surprised to see Dostoyevsky mentioned a few times in other comments.
It's hard to name only two. I'll choose two that deserve to be more famous than they are, in my opinion.
Helen DeWitt's _The Last Samurai_ (no relation to the Tom Cruise movie) is the best novel I've read in years, a brilliant tale of an absurdly precocious childhood, with several more rich tales of their own value nested inside. Anyone who finds curiosity and love of knowledge one of their defining qualities should read this book.
Vikram Seth's _The Golden Gate_ is a smart, funny and moving novel set in the Silicon Valley of the early 80ies. Astonishingly, it's written in verse, in the rhyme scheme of the classic Russian masterpiece _Eugene Onegin_ by Pushkin, which Seth read in translation and loved so much he decided to write a modern American novel in verse. His execution of this unorthodox idea is terrific.
I would Second ANYTHING by Hesse, not got round to a thorough read of Siddhartha yet, but Damien is most excellent and The Glass Bead Games is a revelation for anyone who feels there is something just a little bit ill with the mind and motion of our modern age.
Oh, and something along the lines of The Neverending Story (The Silmarillion/LotR), because it's something to lose yourself in with kids and doesn't even have to be read.
Ok I read a lot so I will just give you my favourite authors just in case someone is looking for new writers to explore. I have read the majority of books written by each of the ones below, and really cannot choose a favourite. So here they are:
sci fi:
PK Dick, Stanislaw Lem, Vonnegut (some of Bradburry's work may join this group but be careful not all of his stuff is brilliant)
crime:
raymond chandler, dashiel hammett
russian lang lit: dostoevsky, bulgakov
english lang lit: vladimir nabakov, joseph heller, evelyn waugh, joseph conrad
All of the above writers are absolutely brilliant and you will not be wasting your time picking up any of their books (except for bradbury, make sure you only get martian chronicles or farenheit 451).
Everytime I read a very good fiction book (or series) like Asimov's Foundation, Simmons' Hyperion Cantos or (currently reading) Stephenson's Cryptonomicon I think 'hey, this one is going to be my favorite'.
The Prize - Daniel Yergin.
Siddhartha - Herman Hesse
The first is a fantastic history of oil. It brings out the politics, economics and personalities that have lit up the history of oil very well. Especially relevant in this day and age, when oil is behind so many geo-political conflicts.
The second is a bit more personal. I could write an entire essay about this book, but suffice it to say that it was exactly the right book at the right time for me. Sometimes, a book just comes along and changes your perspective and way of thinking. This was one of those books for me.
When I was in grad school I noticed that Gödel, Escher, Bach was the book about mathematics that non-mathematicians had on their coffee table. The one that the mathematicians had was The Mathematical Experience.
If I had to name only one other book, for this audience I'd have to go with Code Complete.
Recommendation from me: Have your child read a Gerald Durrell book (My Family and Other Animals is one of his best) when they are 12-15. It will be a fantastic read and will make them dream about pursuing something of their own, most likely animals at first, but other things later.
Not so sure HN type adults will enjoy Gerald Durrell as much :).
[+] [-] mahmud|16 years ago|reply
Muqadimat Ibn Khaldun. History, Sociology, Political Science, Scientific Empiricism, Theology, Superstition, Gossip, Leadership, Trivia .. it's everything. It feels like a collaboration between the Grim brothers, Karl Marx, Douglas Adams and Plato. People well versed in Islamic history will get the most out of it. It's a book written by a scientist for a religious and superstitious audience. You can see him walk the fine line, appeasing his princely sponsors while speaking his mind. It's full of code-language written for a better enlightened generation while accommodating the religious and cultural beliefs of his era. Read his biography and you should see bits and pieces of Rousseau; a hypocritical, pan-handling snob who makes his living saying one thing, and living his life doing another .. while still being a fucking genius :-D
[+] [-] Scott_MacGregor|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kaizyn|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zizou|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Scott_MacGregor|16 years ago|reply
1. The Windows 3.1 manual. A hardcopy in a small grey ring binder that shipped with the operating system when I bought it new. I read it cover to cover to cover 3 times because I wanted to know everything about it. I kept thinking this is a lot like UNIX but nicer to use except for the fact that it had less features than UNIX. Every time I re-read the manual I would think of new things I wished it would do! Which lead me to examine--every--file in the operating system looking for a way to make it better, until Windows 95 came out, lol.
2. EMC Retrospect for Windows Users Guide. I read it cover to cover twice (it’s a 300 page pdf). It is my absolute favorite. If you ever want to learn about backup, this is a great read. Pure tech stuff, no fluff. Here is link if anyone is interested, it’s free: http://www.retrospect.com/assets/en_rug_win75.pdf
[+] [-] Tichy|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ekpyrotic|16 years ago|reply
It has changed my life. For the last two years I have endeavoured to simplify my thoughts/ideas, so they can be communicated precisely. It's hard, painful work.
That aim has recoloured my being: music; literature; art. Philip Glass. Hemingway. Mondrian.
I am not the same person.
[+] [-] lsd5you|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lux|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unalone|16 years ago|reply
Finnegans Wake - This book can't be explained until you've seen it. The pinnacle of the English language.
[+] [-] cojadate|16 years ago|reply
One French critic wrote of 'It':
«Ça» fonctionne parce que «Ça» fait peur. Pendant plus de mille pages – Jean-Pierre Dufreigne, L'Express
Translation: 'It' works because "It" scares. Throughout over one thousand pages.
How wrong can a critic be?
Yes the horror element is great but it's not why 'It' works at all, not for me anyway. For me 'It' works because of its insights into human nature – it's use of fantasy to look unflinchingly at human nature at it's worst and it's most beautiful, to do justice to a world that is full of both evil and goodness, because every story overlaps with other stories overlapping with other stories, just like real life, because it's a morally uncompromising book which presents no hard and fast rules of morality, because it portrays children and childhood accurately, because it shows us a world where abuse, neglect and apathy are rife, come in many forms, and can be perpetrated by people for all kinds of reasons, sometimes wilfully, sometimes from neediness, sometimes from a self-deluded sense of righteousness, sometimes from lack of knowing anything better. Because it also writes about the power of love and the deep bonds people share without a shred of sentimentality. Because it's a fantasy, and yet it shows our world perhaps more accurately than any story I've ever read, watched or heard.
I particularly loved the theme of standing up to oppressors. Many stories have this element, but 'It' is so true to reality that the standing-up is more inspiring and powerful than in other works. Typically however, King has the wisdom to have a side-plot which shows how standing up to oppressors can go wrong, by way of brutal vigilantism and bloody revenge. It's this steadfast refusal to accept clichés and black-and-white worldviews of any kind which I particularly appreciate in King.
I don't know, maybe the best thing about it is that makes a giant telepathic space turtle seem like a perfectly plausible part of a novel characterized by gritty realism.
My second, not entirely unrelated, nomination is 'Psychology is About People' by HJ Eysenck. This is half a century old so I am sure there are now many better books saying much the same thing. But for me it was the culmination of a train of thought, which started when I came across the quote "wisest is she who knows she does not know" in Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World , which made me realize how little I know and how important it is to identify and question my own assumptions.
Psychology is About People is an attack on fuzzy thinking in the fields of public policy-making, social science and, above all, psychology (Eysenck was himself a psychologist). He demonstrates that pyschotherapy, at least in his time, was little more than storytelling which, when held up to the hard light of the experimental method, was almost always proven false. Likewise, he attacks governments for basing their social policies on similarly unexamined assumptions. These fields, especially psychology have all come a long way since Eysenck's time but it's still very easy to spot the kind of fuzzy thinking and refusal-to-question-assumptions everywhere you look.
I disagree with Eysenk in some of the conclusions he makes from his own research, but I think his general approach to knowledge and truth is fantastic. It certainly changed the way I think and has effected in me a permanent distaste for 'meta-narratives' of all kinds.
[+] [-] jeremyw|16 years ago|reply
I'd suggest readers try Joyce's wonderful short stories, then making an assault on Ulysses. Nabokov, a Joyce admirer, called Wake, "that petrified superpun."
[+] [-] recurser|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cesare|16 years ago|reply
- Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy
[+] [-] javery|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jey|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rjett|16 years ago|reply
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas... I'm a sucker for a good plot and this has always been a favorite of mine since I first read it in 5th grade.
[+] [-] rgrieselhuber|16 years ago|reply
The Brother's Karamazov. Pleasantly surprised to see Dostoyevsky mentioned a few times in other comments.
[+] [-] anatoly|16 years ago|reply
Helen DeWitt's _The Last Samurai_ (no relation to the Tom Cruise movie) is the best novel I've read in years, a brilliant tale of an absurdly precocious childhood, with several more rich tales of their own value nested inside. Anyone who finds curiosity and love of knowledge one of their defining qualities should read this book.
Vikram Seth's _The Golden Gate_ is a smart, funny and moving novel set in the Silicon Valley of the early 80ies. Astonishingly, it's written in verse, in the rhyme scheme of the classic Russian masterpiece _Eugene Onegin_ by Pushkin, which Seth read in translation and loved so much he decided to write a modern American novel in verse. His execution of this unorthodox idea is terrific.
[+] [-] sateesh|16 years ago|reply
Dragons Of Eden -- Carl Sagan
[+] [-] theblackbox|16 years ago|reply
Oh, and something along the lines of The Neverending Story (The Silmarillion/LotR), because it's something to lose yourself in with kids and doesn't even have to be read.
[+] [-] leif|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hristov|16 years ago|reply
sci fi: PK Dick, Stanislaw Lem, Vonnegut (some of Bradburry's work may join this group but be careful not all of his stuff is brilliant)
crime: raymond chandler, dashiel hammett
russian lang lit: dostoevsky, bulgakov
english lang lit: vladimir nabakov, joseph heller, evelyn waugh, joseph conrad
All of the above writers are absolutely brilliant and you will not be wasting your time picking up any of their books (except for bradbury, make sure you only get martian chronicles or farenheit 451).
[+] [-] timwiseman|16 years ago|reply
Nonfiction: So many good ones, but I think Surely your joking, Mr. Feynman! is probably the top.
[+] [-] loumf|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simanyay|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leif|16 years ago|reply
spooky
[+] [-] tejus|16 years ago|reply
The first is a fantastic history of oil. It brings out the politics, economics and personalities that have lit up the history of oil very well. Especially relevant in this day and age, when oil is behind so many geo-political conflicts.
The second is a bit more personal. I could write an entire essay about this book, but suffice it to say that it was exactly the right book at the right time for me. Sometimes, a book just comes along and changes your perspective and way of thinking. This was one of those books for me.
[+] [-] arijo|16 years ago|reply
The (Mis)behavior of Markets - Benoit Mandelbrot
The Stuff of Thought - Steven Pinker
The Logic of Scientific Discovery - Karl Popper
The Four Steps to Epiphany - Steven G. Blank
[+] [-] ori_b|16 years ago|reply
Fiasco - Stanislaw Lem
[+] [-] btilly|16 years ago|reply
If I had to name only one other book, for this audience I'd have to go with Code Complete.
[+] [-] callmeed|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pg|16 years ago|reply
Medieval Technology and Social Change
[+] [-] nikolayv|16 years ago|reply
Not so sure HN type adults will enjoy Gerald Durrell as much :).
[+] [-] kirubakaran|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] niyazpk|16 years ago|reply
1) Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos by Michio Kaku
2) The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (I haven't read Atlas Shrugged yet. So cannot compare them.)
Yesterday I finished Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell and it is a very good book too.
Currently reading: What They Teach you at Harvard Business School: My Two Years Inside the Cauldron of Capitalism by Philip Delves Broughton
[+] [-] pgbovine|16 years ago|reply
The Design of Everyday Things http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-Norman/d...