Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?

One book that changed me was reading Master and Margarita in Russian for the first time.

It was the first book I started reading I could not put down until the end. Gained a lot of appreciation for literature at that time.

The other book that I enjoyed and changed me was ‘The Wisdom of Insecurity’ by Alan Watts. I was a fan of Alan Watts works through his lectures already and it was wonderful to hear his ideas in writing for the first time.

The book is available to read for free online (https://antilogicalism.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/wisdom-of...).

I wish everyone read or watched Alan Watts lectures and books. The world would be a much nicer place if that was the case.

My favorite quote is by him:

‘We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is, maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played.’

Animal Farm was a really important book for me. I picked it up aged about 10 or 11 and I remember being really struck by how easily the pigs were able to exploit the other animals' grievances with humans to secure their own power. It felt like a grown-up story with some quite powerful, disturbing meanings under the covers. So I told my English teacher about it and all she told me in response was to go look up the Russian Revolution. I didn't understand why, but did it, and then the book had a second, much bigger impact on me. And of course what a way to learn about allegory!

It was the first time I realized books could be dangerous, subversive, and truly educational as well as simply informative or entertaining.

* Factfulness and Thinking Fast And Slow. The latter helped me internalise that my thinking, like most humans, is biased. Even being aware of those biases doesn’t always help. We need to go above and beyond to overcome our biases. Factfulness goes into detail about what those biases are and how they lead to a distorted world view. Rather than taking the easy way out by blaming journalists/politicians/rich people, he turns the focus onto us and our biases and speaks about how to look at the world in an objective fact based manner.

* The Dictator’s Handbook. One simple axiom - leaders do what is necessary to stay in power. Using that idea they explain the basis of all political systems, whether autocracy or democracy or somewhere in between. I didn’t really understand politics before I read this. CGPGrey has a video where he summarises the book. [1]

* (Only for Indians) India After Gandhi. You can’t really understand your country if you don’t know it’s history. History stopped in 1947 according to our history books, and most people are blissfully unaware of what came after. They don’t know how close India came to losing democracy or how easily it could happen again. They don’t understand the dangers of promoting one language at the expense of others because they don’t know that it’s been tried before. Every Indian needs to know so we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past over and over.

[1] - https://youtu.be/rStL7niR7gs

OK, it might be a bit embarrassing to post this, but I'm going to say Marie Kondo's "The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up."

Not so much for the tidying part (though I did find that extremely helpful), but the whole idea of only keeping things in your life that "spark joy" (not an exact translation by the way - "spark excitement" or "spark meaning" are other ways I like to think about it) has had a profound impact on me.

I realized there were lots of things in my life (much more than just physical objects) that I had just sort of accumulated without thinking about what I really like or if something was good for me. I found the benefit of "practicing" this concept without mundane household objects allowed me to have a stronger sense of what I really enjoy in the more important aspects of my life.

"Basic Economics" by Thomas Sowell. Not an easy read, but it deeply changed the way I think about incentive structures and the law of unintended consequences. It's a tough pill to swallow for people (like myself) who cling to utopian ideas, but the older I get the more I realize we must live in the world as it exists, with human nature as it really is. Dreaming of a better world is counter-productive if one does not engage with reality. We can build a better world, but only by being honest about the current state of things.

Definitely "The Machine That Changed the World" by Womack, Jones, and Roos [0]. This is "the first book to reveal Toyota's lean production system." Before reading it, I had never imagined just-in-time production or value chain mapping, or vehicle assembly lines that can profitably produce quantity one of a product before being reconfigured to produce a different model (SMED: single minute exchange of die).

Now I see muda everywhere and cringe when I overhear people talking about applying kaizen and how they think they're practicing "continuous improvement" while repeating the same rote, industrial, mindless processes that they have been for the last 40 years. We can do so much better. Toyota tried very hard to teach GM how at their NUMMI[1] plant, but it wasn't the right location relative to their suppliers for JIT to fully work and "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." -Upton Sinclair

[0] https://www.lean.org/Bookstore/ProductDetails.cfm?SelectedPr... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI

Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius.

Bottom line: judge your success in life by how well you make your decisions, not by your outcome. You have full control of your decisions, and often no control at all over their results.

Nonviolent Communication by Marshall B. Rosenberg is an amazing eye-opener. It's a book about how how to interact with your fellow humans in a way that enriches the lives of everyone around you. It's full of things that should be obvious, but in practice are not. You can think of it as a more advanced version of Dale Carnegie's "How to make friends and influence people", with more focus on conflicts, and a specific communication methodology.

“The Design of Everyday Things” changed the way I see literally everything. You’ll never look at doors the same way again, and prepare to forever be frustrated by poorly designed objects, and delighted by incredibly well designed ones.

There is no better book on the philosophy of UX, imho.

Maybe trite, but the Bible. For a mind-blowing experience, read Matthew chapters 5–7, and have in mind that the topic is: “what it means for a person to be righteous, or good.” The analysis of the role of moral rules, the place of worry and anxiety in driving us to short-sighted compromise, the tension between “secret” good-doing versus good-doing for public recognition, are all potent, helpful, and life-changing.

* The Selfish Gene - our bodies are vessels for DNA as they travel through time. Also colony insects and birds are fascinating.

* Thinking Fast and Slow - study after study shows that we exhibit so, so many cognitive biases, as our minds take shortcuts. there are some things you can do to recognize and mitigate these biases.

* Imagined Communities - the notion of a "nation" is only 300 years old and has no objective basis, only the fact that a group of people agree that it is a thing.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this one yet: "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion", by Jonathan Haidt [0]. This book fundamentally changed how I think about religion and politics. It helped me understand a lot of behaviors which I'd previous considered absolutely incomprehensible.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Relig...

"Deep Work" by Cal Newport. It completely changed how I view my work, and how I spend my time, more than any other generic self-help book I've come across. It isn't the usual "delete Facebook, and everything will be fine" blog post. The main take-away for me is making a well-defined separation between "busy"/"shallow" work and "deep" work. This takes the form of spending long, uninterrupted periods engaged in deep work (e.g. academic research), with shorter periods allocated for shallow work (e.g. checking and responding to emails). I have managed to allocate one day per week for myself where I completely turn off WiFi, allowing me to focus on whatever task I choose. This means not accepting the temptation to respond to interruptions from instant messaging apps, email, news websites, etc., and it has worked wonders for my productivity! For me, it serves as a weekly reminder of the insane amount of content I consume while online, along with the (highly expensive) constant context-switching I must perform to do this.

Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People" - it changed how I approach teamwork and conversations. It made me aware of how my behaviour was limiting outcomes. :)

Frankly, it made me aware that I was being an asshole and that I should change.

However, it wasn't necessarily the book, but the course that I found really useful.

"Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari.

Hands down the book that most influenced me. The book had (for me) not one but several simple-yet-profound ideas that were forever inserted into the foreground of how I make sense of the world. For example, the existence of shared myths that allow humans to cooperate on a large scale. Or how I too, am religious, though I was sure I wasn't.

Can't recommend it enough.

The Design of Everyday Things makes me rethink every user interaction or problem I face, and not just at work. Every time I open a door, I begin to think about that experience.

Recently, Educated by Tara Westover, and in the past The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls, both have taught me to approach individuals with the true ignorance of their lives that I have. You don't know where people come from and what life led them to where they are when you meet them. Try not to make assumptions. Additionally, I have to remind myself that I grew up loved, cared for, and privileged compared to so many other people.. the fact that I could read their story and post here is a testament to that, helps me try to stay down to Earth and that I had some advantages growing up that others did not.

Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker... I used to be a chronic advocate for sleeping less until I read this and did my own scrappy post-research. I'm much more conscious of my health and my sleep now.

I could go on and on..

Antifragile: How to live in a world we don't understand by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

I realized that my bad relationships are mostly the result of my lack of skin in the game. That indifference is not an advantage but that it is paralyzing.

That I have to feel to be able to risk and do something.

In addition to applying the concept of antifragility to many external things.

It has motivated me to start a business and to connect more with my loved ones, changed my perspective on research, what's important and the power of the passing of time. It definitely impacted my life.

Most recent: Factfulness, by Hans Rosling. For the past year or so, I've been trying hard to understand why people act the way they do, when those actions and beliefs are often irrational. This book brought so much of that together.

Very first: The Song of Wandering Aengus, by William Butler Yeats. I read this when I was six or so. I found it as an illustrated children's book in children's section of the public library of the very small rural town. Someone decided this very adult poem, about an old man who wasted his life chasing an unattainable magic dream, was a good children's story. It introduced me to the idea that poems and stories could express sadness and failure and other negative feelings, not just the happy silly stuff of the other age-appropriate things I read.

"Metaphors We Live By" by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson changed how I thought about language and how I use it to orient myself in the world.

"Thinking in Systems: A Primer" by Donella Meadows changed how I approached designing/troubleshooting software systems as well as changed how I think about political policy decisions and their results.

"Object Thinking" by David West dramatically altered how I approach designing OO systems. I especially liked the chapter(s) where he used different real-world metaphors for designing systems. For example, asynchronous communication (email) is often more appropriate than synchronous communication (calling someone on the phone). Delegation of tasks without "micromanaging" (i.e tell don't ask).

"Ever Wonder Why?" by Thomas Sowell gave me an insight into some of the underpinnings of Conservative thought. I'd never had the opportunity to hear any of the arguments he brings up in college or in my own liberal social groups.

So many, and I wish I could write a long paragraph on each, but I'm unfortunately short on time. I'm posting any in case just one person who hasn't heard of those checks them out and gets value:

-Godel, Escher, Bach (Douglas Hosfstadter)

-The Mindbody Prescription (John E. Sarno, completely cured my long-term crippling RSI that kept me from using computers and was ruining my life)

-Feeling Good (Dr. Burns, cognitive therapy mostly centered on depression, but I want to learn about this before I have depression so that I can avoid it and do 'maintenance' on myself)

-The 5 Love Languages (Gary Chapman, made me understand a lot more about how people express and receive love, and the problems that arise from mismatched languages in relationships)

-Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman (you guys probably already know this)

-The Blank Slate (Steven Pinker)

-The Snowball (Warren Buffett biography)

-Influence (Robert B. Cialdini)

-Your Money or Your Life (Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin)

-When Heaven and Earth Changed Places: A Vietnamese Woman's Journey from War to Peace (Le Ly Hayslip)

-The Halo Effect (Phil Rosenzweig)

-The LessWrong.com sequences on rationality

"Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much" - by Sendhil Mullainathan, Eldar Shafir.

Access to scarce resources induces a particular scarcity mindset, which the authors -- both behavioural economists at Harvard and MIT respectively -- show with a large variety of well-chosen examples.

The kicker is that time is one of those resources. In other words, I may be economically well-off, but if I'm short of time, I adopt the same scarce mindset that poor people (poor in money terms). I fritter away my time, I don't save it and so on. This book really showed me to deal with my time as carefully as I deal with my money. Great read, of the Freakonomics kind.

I imagine I’ll take heat for this, but the first answer that comes to mind is A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze & Guattari. It has been justifiably criticized by many people on many grounds, but as with OP and Freakonomics, certain of the concepts in that book frequently appear in my thoughts 20 years after I worked through some of it. I don’t associate it with truth; but some of the mental models have really stuck with me.

Edit: also Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse. It’s slim and user friendly to a fault, and would be easy to underestimate at first glance, but imho contains great wisdom and beauty.

The book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.

After I read it, I felt like I could see the world for what it really is: just a bunch of fallible humans all pretending they knew The Way Things Should Be. Popes, CEOs, tech gurus, presidents, the lot of them all desperately clinging to their beliefs lest their followers abandon them.

That book made me realize that all the truths everyone "just knows" and takes for granted aren't necessarily truths. They're beliefs, or myths. Even so, there isn't anything necessarily wrong with that: a culture or civilization needs beliefs or myths to function, but what those beliefs are can determine the ultimate fate of that civilization and whether it's sustainable.

What I really took away from it is that I no longer really believe anything. Or perhaps more accurately, I recognize when something I hold true is actually a belief and not truth, and am willing to question it or understand that I continue to hold it despite any supporting evidence. I learned that beliefs are choices people make, for reasons their own.

I was always an atheist, but I realized religions are just more beliefs like any other belief people hold as true.

I learned that some beliefs can be beneficial ("If I'm good to others, others will be good to me") and others destructive ("Humans are the pinnacle of evolution"). Ideas don't need to be true to be helpful (which is why the relentless drive in tech communities, often, for the objective truth or a logical ordering and categorization for everything rubs me the wrong way).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishmael_(novel)

The Selfish Gene by Dawkins. The gene is the unit of replication, and this affects every process in this universe.

I read through the bible every year and each time it shapes my thinking. For example, I was reading Exodus this morning about how we should care for the foreigner. I imagine several thousand years ago this was pretty radical. It also seems very relevant today.

Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

This helped me understand the duality of the logical/mechanical and the creative/artistic. Then merging the two.

Ulysses, by James Joyce.

It will change your whole conception of what language is and how it can be used. It’s not about the characters or plots; they are recycled from antiquity. It’s about the absolute mastery of interrelation between words and imagery. It is something that has a meaning entirely emergent of its’ own self referential structure, rather than what is being described, in a sense that is almost mathematical. Realizing that was possible with writing really blew my mind.

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, by Carl Sagan.

It changed the way I see the world, how to have a sceptical mind and not only how but why one should question.

And also, it shows to me that, if you don't have a answer for something, doesn't mean that it can not be true. It's just that you don't know. And for a lot of things, this is the correct and only answer that we can have now.

I second the recommendation of Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse. He takes this simple concept and expands and applies it to modern tech, politics, the workplace, education, etc:

"There are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play."

The player in a finite game actually wants it to end, where the play itself is just a means to this end. He is "playing against play." The player in an infinite game wants it to continue, and revels in the game itself.

"Although it may be obvious, it is worth stressing that “play,” as it is used here does not mean merely “playing around.” Play, in this discussion, is a metaphor for any number of complex human engagements whenever they take on a competitive, or cooperative, character. Corporations, for example, not only compete with each other but are in themselves populations of strivers, each trying to supplant another, each struggling for higher incomes and titles. The same applies to schools and colleges where attaining superior grade averages, degrees, and honors absorb the lives of students. Sexuality and marriage are often finite battle grounds with winners and losers. In fact, the features of play–finite and infinite–are essentially the same whether we are children playing jacks or soldiers caught up in a war between nations."

To me it is a concise and broadly applicable way to see the world.

https://jamescarse.com/wp/?page_id=61

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/189989.Finite_and_Infini...

1) "The Beginning of Infinity" by David Deutsch - This book allowed me to embrace a sort of rational optimism in my world view. Also I was convinced by this book that the true test of a good government is not about whether you can pick the right leaders every time, but about being able to remove the bad ones relatively quickly.

2.) Candide by Voltaire - contributed to my personal sense of humor and belief that we live in neither the best nor worst of all possible worlds, but simply the most absurd of them.

3) The Art of War by Sun Tzu - Helped me understand the power of small effeciencies in large systems and the importance of metagaming.

The Illuminatus Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson

https://www.amazon.com/Illuminatus-Trilogy-Pyramid-Golden-Le...

I can't belive nobody has mentioned "Walden" by Henry David Thoreau.

To be fair, I'm not a big recreational reader. But this one will always stick out to me. When I read it in college, it had such a profound effect on me, I belive it literally helped shape who I am as a person even to this day

Maybe it was right place, right time. It is certainly an impressionable age, but I have read it again as an older man, & it was just as powerful.

I've read "Guns, germs & steel", "How to win friends & influence people", "Freakonomics" & some of the other stuff that pop up in the comments, they are all fine. But none of them influenced me like "Walden" did.

A true American classic.

"Difficult Conversations: How to discuss what matters most". I bought this on the strength of an HN suggestion.

It's like Design Patterns for human conversations: the result of studying how people interact, common patterns that work, and how things break down. Really crystallised a lot of insights I'd perceived but never thought about systematically. I highly recommend it.

Word of warning - there are a few books with this title. Look for the one by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, Sheila Heen.

Also Thinking Fast and Slow, recommended elsewhere in this thread.

"Debt: The first 5000 years" completely changed the way I view money, society, and relationships.

"The selfish gene" changed the way I define life, opened my eyes to virtual life, and morality of selfishness vs. altruism.

"Into the Cool: Energy Flow, Thermodynamics, and Life" changed the way I view the life and material existence. Whereas before I viewed them as two separate domains, after I see them as a spectrum.

Chinese classic taoism treaties: "Dao De Jing", and "Zhuan Zi", offers a via-negativa way of thinking and view of existence, the values are beyond words.

Mine would be "Why we get fat and what to do about it" by Gary Taubes. Not only it changed my life (overweight to my healthiest ever), it also led me to challenge everything about our dietary dogmas. I further read "Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living", watched a lot of lectures and saw studies which question our current notions. Overall I am more skeptical of studies which have links to those benefiting from it commercially.

About 10 years ago I read a book called "Rich Dad, Poor Dad". In summary, it describes a different way of thinking about money and wealth and the mindset of a successful person versus one who struggles with money.

For a long time I had wanted to start a business but after reading that book I truly believed I could. It was a long journey but I now run my own software business and I honestly would not have started on this path had my friend not recommended it to me.

To be honest, I'm almost embarrassed to admit it. It is not high-brow literature, and I don't even think it's considered to be a good book on being an entrepreneur, but it was a very important part of my story.

Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss - As someone who doesn't want to "negotiate" and be a hard bargainer across the table, this book taught me how to bring empathy to every negotiation, and to use that get both parties what they really want most. It's also a fascinating read that details a number of his negotiations as chief hostage negotiator for the FBI.

"The Dictator's Handbook" by DeMesquita and Smith is a popular take on their academic work that describes a metamodel for reasoning about power and politics that bypasses how things "may" or "should" work and talks about how they "must" work.

https://www.amazon.ca/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Pol...

And a general +1 for GEB. If you read that as a teenager, you are different for it.

The Brothers Karamazov by Feodor Dostoevsky. At the time I didn't realize that it changed me, but looking back on it, the perspectives I learned from it fundamentally how I viewed and understood other people.

Thinking fast and slow had the biggest impact in changing how I think about a lot of things, epic study of how you’re predisposed to think and make decisions in a particular way. Coincidentally I read it at about the same time as freakonomics!