I’m always looking for good books, so I sorted through other people’s lists of 10 most influential books and consolidated them. The notes I included are mostly notes from the original lists.<\/p>\n
Philosophy & Political philosophy<\/strong> Plato, Dialogues. <\/p>\n History<\/strong> The Presence of the Past: Essays on the State and the Constitution by Sheldon S. Wolin. (Like a deeply planted time bomb, this book’s various observations and arguments (mostly about Tocqueville and the Federalists and Anti-Federalists) kept coming to me, suddenly making sense, while thinking about community or politics or government or religion or philosophy or just about anything else, years and years after my advisor first recommended it to me.)<\/p>\n The Power Broker by Robert Caro. <\/p>\n Economics<\/strong> A Farewell to Alms by Gregory Clark. <\/p>\n Modern<\/strong> The Quark and the Jaguar by Murray Gell-Mann. (QM and modern physics).<\/p>\n Why Buildings Fall Down by Matthys Levy and Mario Salvadori. Rebel Without a Crew: Or How a 23-Year-Old Filmmaker With $7,000 Became a Hollywood Player by Robert Rodriguez.<\/p>\n Code Complete by Steve McConnell. Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel by Rolf Potts.<\/p>\n Life’s Devices by Steven Vogel. (This is a book about biomechanics but also, and more importantly, a terrific introduction to what is means to do science.) Boyd: The Fight Pilot who Changed the Art of War by Robert Coram.<\/p>\n Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. (me–Heard enough about it, and it’s been absorbed into the culture, that it doesn’t feel urgent to read it. But seeing the details and situation when she wrote would be interesting.)<\/p>\n The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan. <\/p>\n Biography<\/strong> <\/p>\n Business\/Self-help<\/strong> <\/p>\n Fiction<\/strong> <\/p>\n Other<\/strong> <\/p>\n Not mentioned but on my to read list:<\/strong> Studs Terkel, The Good War: An Oral History of World War Two (Detailed ordinary peoples’ accounts of the country’s involvement in World War II). Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression, Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do. <\/p>\n Skipped on most\/all lists:<\/strong> <\/p>\n On multiple lists but unappealing to me:<\/strong> I’m always looking for good books, so I sorted through other people’s lists of 10 most influential books and consolidated them. The notes I included are mostly notes from the original lists. Philosophy & Political philosophy The Federalist Papers, by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe Federalist Papers, by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay.
\nDemocracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville.
\nThe Open Society and its Enemies by Karl Popper.
\nJohn Stuart Mill, Autobiography. (This got me thinking about how one’s ideas change, and should change, over the course of a lifetime. Plus Mill is a brilliant thinker and writer more generally.)
\nBertrand Russell (my addition, not on anyone’s list)<\/p>\n
\nThucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War.
\nThe Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (Hay’s translation).
\nLetters from a Stoic by Seneca.
\nNiccol\u00c3\u00b2 Machiavell’s The Prince.
\nThe Discovery and Conquest of Mexico by Bernal Diaz del Castillo.
\nOn War by Carl Von Clausewitz.
\nmore George Orwell–Homage to Catalonia, The Road to Wigan Pier.
\nChurchill’s history of the Second World War.
\nThe Art of Memory by Frances A. Yates. (History of an ancient mental technique for orators, up to its graphical importance for pre-science in the early modern period.)<\/p>\n
\nBattle Cry Of Freedom by James MacPherson.
\nLincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America by Garry Wills. (Presented a way of thinking about “liberalism” and “conservatism” in the American context that I don’t think anyone has yet been able to refute. More than that, it’s also a tour de force, linking the history of America, the nature of rhetoric, and the meaning of democracy and constitutionalism together into a single, succinct argument.)<\/p>\n
\nFear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72, by Hunter S. Thompson.
\nBefore the Storm, by Rick Perlstein. (The rise of Barry Goldwater and movement conservatism in the early 60s).<\/p>\n
\nWealth of Nations by Adam Smith.
\nThe Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx.
\nThe General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money by John Maynard Keynes. (Keynes is one of the greatest thinkers of economics and there are new ideas on virtually every page.)
\nMicromotives and Macrobehavior by Thomas Schelling.
\nThe Undercover Economist by Tim Harford.
\nThe Incredible Bread Machine, by Susan Love Brown, et.al.<\/p>\n
\nEconomics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt.
\nThe Long Tail by Chris Anderson. (There is not much that needs to be said about this book other than it defines current net economics. There’s the head of the tail which is the stuff you find in Borders, and the tail, which is the infinite inventory on Amazon.)<\/p>\n
\nHow to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff.
\nMathematics in the Modern World: Readings from Scientific American by Morris Kline
\nVisualizing Data by William S. Cleveland. (This book presents a set of graphical methods for displaying data. Does it ever. Cleveland shows you how it’s done in practice and wrote the software that lets you code it yourself.)<\/p>\n
\nHow Buildings Learn by Stewart Brand.
\nDeath and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs.<\/p>\n
\nThe Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by Eric S Raymond. (me–I might have already read this, and certainly absorbed the ideas.)<\/p>\n
\nRavens in Winter by Bernd Heinrich. (Heinrich follows ravens around in Vermont, trying to figure out why the hell they would share carrion they find. I’d recommend this book to anyone.)
\nThe Chimpanzees of Gombe, In the Shadow of Man, by Jane Goodall.
\nPlagues and Peoples by William McNeill.<\/p>\n
\nHell’s Angels by Hunter S. Thompson.<\/p>\n
\nMy Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass.
\nThe Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X and Alex Haley.
\nAlexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow.
\nThomas Moody by Michael Davitt (Biography of an Irish patriot).<\/p>\n
\nThe Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss.
\nThe Ropes to Skip and the Ropes to Know by Richard Ritti and G. Ray Funkhouser.
\nHow To Win Friends And Influence People by Dale Carnegie. (It’s a timeless classic–highly recommend it.)<\/p>\n
\nOne Thousand and One Nights.
\nDon Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes.
\nDracula by Bram Stoker.
\nJonathan Swift. (me–Not sure which book.)
\nLeaves of Grass by Walt Whitman.
\nThe Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler.
\nMother Night by Kurt Vonnegut.
\nThe Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood.
\nThe Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov.<\/p>\n
\nThe Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller.
\nThe Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.
\nThe Sandman series by Neil Gaiman.<\/p>\n
\nA Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft (1792).<\/p>\n
\nThe New Science of Strong Materials: Or why you don’t fall through the floor by J E Gordon.
\nWar Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage by Lawrence H. Keeley.
\nHoudini!!! by Ken Silverman.
\nMilitary Blunders: The how and why of military failure by Saul David.<\/p>\n
\nDewey, anarchists, science, Renaissance writers, biographies, Malthus, The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin.<\/p>\n
\nPlutarch
\nphilosophy
\nreligious texts
\nAnalects of Confucius
\nThomas Aquinas
\nRene Descartes
\nEdmund Burke
\nSigmund Freud (me–a pseudoscientific fraud interesting today mainly as a historical and curtural oddity).
\nThe History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon.
\nLeo Tolstoy
\nDostoyevky
\nCharles Dickens
\nAyn Rand
\nMilton and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose.
\nThe Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan.
\nThe Structure of Scientific Revolution by Thomas Kuhn. (me–Heard the thumbnail version).
\nFight Club by Chuck Palahniuk.
\nAnimal Liberation by Peter Singer.
\nJoseph Campbell, The Power of Myth (me–Heard the thumbnail version, suffered through all six Star Wars movies).
\nRichard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve. (me–Instead I read Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man).
\nThe Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, by Julian Jaynes. (me–wrong).
\neverything else written before 1800.
\n
\nUpdate:<\/strong>
\n(5\/10) How to Solve It (1945) by George P\u00c3\u00b3lya. Mathematician explains how to solve problems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"