Which non-fiction books had the biggest impact on you?

If you're not a person who tends to get sucked into a book, and has every waking thought resonate with what you've read, then read some Chomsky.

You may not agree with his views (it's so far to the left, that it makes your head spin) but rather read it for how he writes. His terse words are a window into his psyche.

Everything is presented in a very "matter-of-fact" way. I've read most of his books and it's surprising how very little he thinks of his own opinions. For him, it's not a revelation that the world is corrupt and full of structures that incentivise the destruction of the middle class etc., it's just a matter of fact. "That's how the world is and this is where I think it's going, good luck with changing that.", that's what it feels like.

I was pretty young when I started reading them, around 16. It temporarily changed me for the worse, the books are so pessimistic, that it tends to put that person I described above (getting sucked into books) into a depressive state.

If you want to start somewhere, try "Manufacturing Consent" (by Chomsky and Herman).

If you've already read that, then try "On Palestine" by Chomsky as well, I don't recall reading it but it does seem timely now.

The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman. It had a huge impact on the way I view UX issues, and the relationship between users & developers/companies, and I prioritize users' "dumb questions" way differently now as a result. It's also made me feel less bad about times that I have a problem with using some piece of software, whether it's a settings menu that I can't find what I need in it, or some complex setup process.

The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker.

Not because of the actual topic, although that's important too; but because of the first 150 or so pages, where Pinker starts by saying something like: you won't believe me about how violence has declined unless I first disabuse you of the notion that the past was nice. He then describes how truly awful pretty much everyone and everything was in the past. It was an eye-opener.

Those who romanticize the past (which is most people) do themselves a grave disservice.

"The righteous mind" by Jonathan Haidt. I loved it so much that I gave it to three different peoples.

It's about psychological studies of morality, and what tends to influence one sense of morality.

It had a huge impact on me because I feel that it helped me grow as a person, and being able to understand other culture/other principle, even if I don't necessarily agree with that.

Lots of stuff that seems plain evil from a western point of view (ergo, centered about the morals of individuality) would look more sensible once understood from a moral coming from a sense of community, and the necessarily conservative need to foster a stable societal structure.

It doesn't mean that I agree with things like opposing the rights of woman to drive/open bank account, but it help understanding the motivation better.

Another interesting point he brings is the differentiation between a moral judgement (X is good or bad), and the moral reasoning (X is bad because of Y and Z). Notably, the moral judgement come before the moral reasoning, the latter being used not as a way to reach a conclusion, but as a way to defend a moral judgement with our peers.

Jonathan Haidt is mostly known for his works on the political polarization of the USA.

Another book I found incredibly enriching (but unfortunately only in French) is "Au coeur des services spéciaux", which is an interview by Jean Guisnel (a french investigative journalist) of Alain Chouet, a former director of the DGSE (the french CIA basically).

Alain Chouet studied Arabic and the arab/muslim world even before joining the DGSE, and what I picked up at the bookstore as a way to understand the french intelligence services turned out to be an extremely interesting (and respectful) exposé of the muslim and arab world, with the prism of political Islam, the history of terrorism as seen by french intelligence service, his opinion on many nuclear programs, and of course a great deal about 9/11.

The writing of the book is very fresh thanks to the conversational/interview style used, and while the book show its age more and more (it's from 2013), I still believe it's a worthwhile lecture if one is curious about such subject, especially given the current context.

I'm assuming this thread is non-programming related since that's like everything else on this website

Probably Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. And it didn't impact me in a way where I agreed with it, it was more the opposite. It sort of made me realize "oh, this is what bullshit looks like" and I was able to take that and apply it elsewhere

I'll give an example... Hegel sort of works like this: person X says A, person Y says B, there's a disagreement, they both fight to the death and person X enslaves person Y, then person Y goes crazy, turns to religion (I'm not bullshitting here either, he introduces the priest at this point in the master slave dialectic [0]), then person Y affirms their own slavery both physically and mentally. This is the basic process on which "history" happens

Think about this for a second, all of those people who died in the 20th century because of this guy's bullshit. I read his garbage cover to cover, lesson learned: bullshit is dangerous. There's a reason why Hegel doesn't like math. After I read this guy, it made me realize something: non-technical non-fiction is fiction

[0] "As a separate, independent extreme, it rejects the essence of its will, and casts upon the mediator or minister [priest] its own freedom of decision, and herewith the responsibility for its own action. This mediator, having a direct relationship with the unchangeable Being, ministers by giving advice on what is right." (para 228)

Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage

lots of great recommendations already, but this is a relatively quick read and a great story.

How To Build A Car

If you're into F1 -- or precision engineering -- it's a cool book that gives you insight into a fantastic designer and his approach to producing machines

I could go on but those are two books I thought about while going about my day today

I’d like to say

- Factfulness or

- Sapiens or

- Richard Feynman’s various writings

…but the most measurable impact was probably from something like

- “Strunk and white The Elements of Style” or

- “How to win friends and influence people” or

- “Oh! Pascal!” Or

- “the dictionary” or

- some specific bus timetable that enabled a pivotal moment in my life

On Writing by Stephen King is one of the best books about the craft of not only writing, but any solo creative endeavor. It is also immensely entertaining and dark. The Audiobook is read by the author and he does a great job.

Six Pillars Of Self-Esteem. Biggest effect on me of any book, by far. The only book that immediately jumped to mind without me needing to check my "read" list.

I vaguely recall The Soul Of Sex giving me a healthier foundation for my own sexuality.

The Power Of Myth and The Varieties Of Religious Experience for general spiritual goodness.

The Selfish Gene has probably had a deep lingering effect on my thoughts about my life as a biological creature.

Every Page Is Page One is very helpful for realizing (what I believe to be) the higher purpose of technical documentation, which is knowledge sharing.

- Gödel, Escher, Bach (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel,_Escher,_Bach)

- Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline.

The four gospels: Mathew, Mark, Luke and John

I made a page of some of the all-time favorite books I have read, re-read, and would recommend - https://brajeshwar.com/books/

You are Not So Smart by David McRaney. It started a journey of self reflection and introspection that I'm still working on to this day but extremely thankful for. It changed the way I look at myself and the actions of other people, both for the better.

It all started for me when I heard about the three jesuses of ypselanti. I hope you enjoy it too.

https://youarenotsosmart.com/2014/01/07/yanss-podcast-015-i-...

James Gleick's books in general, Chaos being a favorite.

Sartre's essays on existentialism, Camus's big essays too.

Jiddu Krishnamurti's Awakening intelligence is also very good.

Edit0:

How nonviolence protects the state, Peter Gelderloos.

Very measured look at the discourse around violence and nonviolence. Fruitful read.

Free here: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-how...

Edit1: Freud's Totems and taboos, and some Jung, but I forget what exactly.

"Stumbling on Happiness" by Daniel Gilbert. Big insight - people generally have a way of rationalizing away things they did (new job, move, relationship) that turned out to be bad ideas - they focus on the positive parts, or say how they learned so much. But this doesn't work if you decided not to do something, and that inaction turned out to be a bad idea - you can't say you learned so much, because you didn't do anything. Implication is that we should be bolder in our decisions, to avoid regret.

As a kid? I'd probably name "Goedel, Escher, Bach" and "The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language" as the two that had the biggest impact on me while I was in high school.

A book I really enjoyed was “Games people play” by Eric Berne.

It made me reflect a lot on the interactions I have with the people around me, and I think I needed to develop a deeper level of self-awareness than I had prior to reading it. So I’m glad I read it.

I liked "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"

I have 3 books that have made me a before and after in my life: - the 4 hour work week - 48 laws of power - 12 rules for life

Some recent ones I've really enjoyed: The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind - Julian Jaynes; And: Phenomenology of the End - Franco Berardi; The True Believer - Eric Hoffer; I See Satan Fall Like Lightning - Rene Girard; Surplus Enjoyment - Slavoy Zizek; Dionysus, Christ, and the Death of God - Giuseppe Fornari

Phenomenology of the End in particular blew my mind.

Ok:

1) Happy by Derren Brown - a stoic interpretation for the modern world (how to live, and die, happy)

2) The Daily Stoic - 366 pages of stoic philosophy for each day

3) how to control drinking / this naked mind- second book is a reinterpretation of the first, made the biggest impact on my life, helping me stop drinking

4) Atomic Habits - helped me appreciate it is a little nudge that makes the biggest long term difference

Language in Thought and Action by S.I. Hayakawa

Metaphors We Live By by Lakoff and Johnson

The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan

The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker

Tao Te Ching (various translators)

I’ll echo the Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan.

Recently, I finished the making of the atomic bomb by Richard Rhodes. It’s quite long, but a fascinating view on physics, weapon development, and then the politics of the bomb. It’s a good exercise to compare with the current state of AI and see what things are similar and what are different.

Think and Grow Rich written by Napoleon Hill is the book that had the biggest impact on me. By the name you would think that only talks about money and finance, but the real message is about the power of desire. I loved it and really changed my mind and the way of doing things. Really recommend it.

if you want to read modern philosophy, go for 48 laws of power, and human laws by robert Greene. These two books are better than any self help books collectively which are available today!

This Is Your Brain on Music -by Daniel Levitin

--helped me understand why listening to music has such a varied and profound effect on me.

Hallucinations -by Oliver Sack

--piqued my interest in the brain and the notion that it is running the show behind the scenes and what we perceive to be reality is merely a construct of our neural activity.

The big impact books tend to be the ones read in youth. One that I re-read many times was the biography of Robert Wood by William Seabrook (both really fascinating characters):

Doctor Wood, Modern Wizard of the Laboratory

For a more recent, although not nearly as formative read:

The Coddling of the American Mind

I will go with Wanting by Luke Burgis. It makes the works of Rene Girard accessible. For me, it made me conscious of how much of our nature is simply copying others. Basically, one should make a conscious effort to select who to copy. Also, because we copy it means we would have a desire for the same object in which conflict can arise. We can realize this and take steps to mitigate possible conflict.

A surprising insight of the book is that having hierarchies reduces conflict. I wrote a summary of the book here: https://www.chestergrant.com/summary-wanting-by-luke-burgis

"The art of electronics" by Horowitz and Hill

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. It taught me to pay attention to nonverbal language in decision making

Recently, "The Situation is Hopeless... But Not Serious" - Paul Watzlawick

All of Nietzsche. Antioedipus. Marcuse's One Dimensional Man. Wittgenstein's Notebooks. The works of Vilem Fluser. Basically most major/famous philosophers are a solid bet.

The Road to Wigan Pier - Orwell

Antifragile - Taleb

What is Life? - Schrodinger

Structure and Interpretations of Computer Programs - Abelson

Whilst not strictly non-fiction, I'm going with The Goal bg Eli Goldratt. It's a novel about accounting. Specifically, Goldratt's Theory of Constraints.

It presents the idea that manufacturing accounting is wrong.

“How to sell at margins higher than your competitors”, which profoundly improved my pricing strategy at the software business I started.

“Self esteem” - which altered how I saw myself and understood my own behavior when dating.

I'd suggest books like:

https://equalityfiles.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/thomas_sza...

and any of Byung-Chul Han's philosophical books over the last ten years, though The Burnout society is probably the place to start.

My favorite thing about these books is that if the title piques your interest, it's a quick read because of the aphoristic style keeping the aforementioned short.

The C Programming Language

Course of Theoretical Physics

Marie Kondo - Spark Joy. I like it because it provides a different perspective on the stuff you buy but don't use (thank you for showing me that I didn't like this style of shirt) as you give it away. Getting rid of stuff isn't revolutionary, but how she thinks about the things you own is different.

Her show is very similar to the book, but the book explains it better. Her second book is more of the same, not sure about the third

The Experience of God by David Bentley Hart

Any of David Foster Wallace's books of essays such as A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again and Consider the Lobster

Future Shock by Alvin Toffler

I read it in 1970. It sparked my interest in technology; an interest that is very much alive and kicking all these years later.

Seneca Amusing Ourselves to Death The Color of Law

Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.

Seriously would read each sentence then spend a minute just to letting the shattering existential realizations sink in.

"Linux From Scratch" was a life-changing experience, with a high practical value: you finally take full control over your hardware and start to understand why every component exists on your system and how you can control it.

Not going to mention any psychological studies or philosophical essays, because, sorry, OP asked for non-fiction...

women hold up half the sky. i was ignorant to a lot of suffering in the world before I read this book. very emotional read.

spell of the sensuous. mind bending history of the alphabet, the effect of being literate on your ways of thinking and an introduction to phenomenology and our original sin of considering "nature" to be an "other"

"The Liberators" by Viktor Suvorov <https://archive.org/details/ViktorSuvorovTheLiberatorsMyLife...>

I wish this one was required reading.

Denny Borsboom: Measuring the Mind - about measuring psychological attributes, its philosophical foundations and how that translates to actual mathematical models; short, focused book written with great information density, but very readable.

Eccleisastes — Holy Bible

A book on the vanity of life

I really love "A World to Build: New Paths toward Twenty-First Century Socialism" by Marta Harnecker. Here, the phrase "21st Century socialism" is a phrase meant to distinguish between a different socialism that existed in the 20th century (namely the Soviet Union). The book outlines a socialist vision that is decidedly not like the Soviet Union, and it's inspiring. Think a focus on decentralization, anti-authoritarian, pushing power closer to people, greater democracy, and a general goal of human flourishing (or "living well"). I think a lot of people would resonate with Marta Harnecker's vision if they knew about it. It's hopeful and optimistic without being naive. Also a pretty easy read that doesn't get bogged down by academia or technical philosophy. It's also much more modern than a lot of the classic texts of socialism.

https://monthlyreview.org/product/a_world_to_build/

The Gulag Archipelago, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

None of this is taught in school - but it should be.

A Mind for Numbers by Barbara Oakley. I’ve ingrained many of her lessons as habits.

Guns, Germs, and Steel

The Nature of Personal Reality, by Seth (as “channeled” by Jane Roberts. That—and other Seth books. They provided me with a sense of wonder.

How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World by Harry Browne

Rhetoric, Politics, and/or Ethics by Aristotle

Kids and the Amiga

Hackers

The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer

LSD my problem child by Albert Hoffmann

The Ascent of Humanity: Civilization and the Human Sense of Self by Charles Eisenstein

Cosmos by Carl Sagan

It really opened my mind to the quest for knowledge being its own noble pursuit.

A History of The Internet And the Digital Future - Johnny Ryan

The Master Switch - Tim Wu

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Surveillance_Capi...

And Permanent Record by Snowden

electric cool aid acid test the code book warped passages

Howard Zinn: A People's History of the US

Finite and Infinite Games - James P. Carse

I ran this thread through GPT-4 to extract mentions and summarize them in markdown. Sharing if it's helpful for others too.

* "Manufacturing Consent" by Chomsky and Herman (2 mentions) * Summary: This book investigates and criticizes the media's role in promoting and sustaining powerful interests. Chomsky frames the media as a system that safeguards the power of the elite by shaping public opinion.

* "On Palestine" by Chomsky (1 mention) * Summary: This book offers an insightful view of one of the most enduring and intractable conflicts of our time. Chomsky explores the historical origins, developments, and politics surrounding the Israel-Palestine conflict.

* "Requiem for the American Dream" by Noam Chomsky (1 mention) * Summary: This book discusses the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few and its effects on democracy in America. It highlights the decline of the middle class and the widening wealth gap.

* "The Design of Everyday Things" by Don Norman (2 mentions) * Summary: The book details the science behind our interaction with everyday items. It scrutinizes the design process and explores the relationship between users and the products they use, urging designers to think deeply about how their designs influence user behavior.

* "The Better Angels of Our Nature" by Steven Pinker (1 mention) * Summary: This book challenges the belief that society is becoming increasingly violent, arguing instead that violence has declined over historical time periods. It explores the psychological and societal mechanisms that have led to this decrease.

* "Factfulness" by Hans Rosling (1 mention) * Summary: Factfulness emphasizes a more optimistic view of global human progress. It challenges the notion that the world is worse off today than it was in the past by providing facts and statistics that argue the contrary.

* "Phenomenology of Spirit" by Hegel (1 mention) * Summary: This is a central work of German philosophy in which Hegel explores the concept of 'spirit'. He examines the relationship between consciousness and its objects, eventually leading to a discussion about the nature of freedom and the unfolding of history.

* "The Righteous Mind" by Jonathan Haidt (2 mentions) * Summary: The book delves into the world of moral psychology and its impact on politics and religion. Haidt proposes that morality is not a product of rational thought but is driven by intuitive reactions, challenging conventional understandings of morality.

* "How To Build A Car" (1 mention, author not specified) * Summary: The book offers a captivating analysis of Formula 1 car design and the precision engineering involved in creating these high-performance vehicles. It provides insights into the processes followed by a renowned designer.

* "Factfulness" (1 mention, author not specified) * Summary: Factfulness emphasizes a more optimistic view of global human progress. It challenges notions that the world is getting worse by presenting an array of facts that argue the contrary.

* "Strunk and White The Elements of Style" (1 mention, author not specified) * Summary: A guide to English language usage and writing style that covers topics such as conciseness, clarity, and simplicity of expression. It is considered a seminal work on English composition and is widely used in American English writing.

* "Gödel, Escher, Bach" (1 mention, author not specified) * Summary: This book explores the concept of how symbols, patterns and loops manifest in the fields of mathematics, art and music. It also discusses aspects of cognition and consciousness and how our minds perceive and understand the world.

As a kid, "The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science" by Isaac Asimov. As an adult, "Das Kapital" by Karl Marx.