- The Sovereign Individual by James Dale Davidson
- How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World by Harry Browne
- The Bell Curve by Charles A. Murray and Richard Herrnstein
Books that make you go "hum....". It could be about Government, Money, Society, etc. Something very different from the modern-day "4 hour work week" garbage
- Factfulness by Hans Rosling: In the advent of information flowing from everywhere, it changed the way I look that the world and process it. It is fascinating how much influenced we are just by our hardwired biases and the media.
- Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl: Everyone goes through their highs and lows, this account will teach you how to stay put and proceed forward.
- Turn the Ship Around by L. David Marquet: In a world where we are constantly trying to innovate, it is not possible without unlocking the true potential of the workforce. This is not possible without appropiate accountability and autonomy. The book goes through how to achieve enough of both. You do not have to manage anyone to gain its benefits.
https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465...
Oakeshott's Rationalism in Politics blew my mind. (He sees almost all modern political parties as dominated by this rationalism.) I was embarrassed how much I learnt from this long essay. Even a lot about piano teaching. Worth it for the ancient Chinese anecdote in the footnotes alone.
Richard Sennett The Fall of Public Man is a history of public spaces, living in cities, public politics, political charisma etc, since Paris in the 19th C.
Erving Goffman Presentation of Self in Everyday Life looks at (All these books are very hard to summarise!!) the stages, backstages, performances of life, actual stages, shops, hotels, ranks in organisations, these little worlds with rules and customs, how the rules are subverted, created, evolve.. full of fascinating stories.
EF Schumacher Small is Beautiful - definitely about government, money, society. Economics as if people mattered. When I first read this, I thought the survival of the planet depended on people reading it.
I found Mandeville's Fable of the Bees (1729) extremely funny and just as true. How everything depends on the sins of humanity. If we were all virtuous, economies would fall apart etc. Goes in detail into this argument and he's hard to argue with.
Susan Faludi's STIFFED. I learnt so much about modern work, life, society, and being a man from this. A must read.
p.s. and everything by JK Galbraith and C Wright Mills. Good luck!
Critical Thinking and Intelligence Analysis by David T. Moore, also available online: https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a481702.pdf
- From Wikipedia [2]: "Griffin was a native of Mansfield, Texas, who had his skin temporarily darkened to pass as a black man. He traveled for six weeks throughout the racially segregated states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, and Georgia to explore life from the other side of the color line."
"Leave the harm done by the other where it started !!"
This struck me like lightning. The crux of how to conduct oneself in one sentence.
The Complete works of Zhuangzi - Burton Watson
3) The Technological Society by Jacques Ellul
- This is a vaccine for modern life, the red pill. We are surrounded by what Ellul calls a technical milieu. After reading this, you will not look at the processes that operate in the society the same way. Warning, this and it's sibling The Propaganda are scary and depressing read. Perhaps you may want to balance it with something positive.
4) Early Retirement Extreme - Jacob Lund Fisker
- Specialization is for cockroaches. Looking at the first 2 books you named, may be you will like this.They are one his references. The savings rate chart is worth it, to put things in perspective.
Be Here Now https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Here_Now_(book)
The Tao of Pooh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tao_of_Pooh
Tao Te Ching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tao_Te_Ching
"Men like Henry George are rare unfortunately. One cannot imagine a more beautiful combination of intellectual keenness, artistic form and fervent love of justice. Every line is written as if for our generation." - Einstein
I was a different person before and after I had read those books, and now I categorise all works of fiction into those that forever alter my way of thinking and those that do not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Egan#Novels
Which reminds me, I should finish: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthogonal_(series)
The Culture series by Iain Banks, especially Inversions also satisfy this requirement, as does The City at the End of Time by Greg Bear: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_at_the_End_of_Time -- which is a difficult to consume masterpiece that nonetheless left me permanently horrified in the way that H. P. Lovecraft tried but failed.
For the non-fiction category the CGP Grey video "The Rules for Rulers": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
and Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig_qpNfXHIU
have totally changed the way I look at all political discourse, and this is coming from someone who has already absorbed The Prince. It's based on the Dictator's Handbook, which I should read also, but the CGP video was an effective summary already!
https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Po...
Last, but not least, if I'm allowed to include lecture videos, then the "Arithmetic, Population and Energy" lecture by Al Bartlett is absolutely amazing. You will never see the news in the same way again after watching it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O133ppiVnWY