Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything? ↗
The books people recommended
2019-02-05 · 2,009 points · 1,165 comments · 452 books named by at least one person here and at least 3 people overall. The number on the left is how many people named it in this thread.
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- 9The Brothers Karamazov
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- 9A Thousand Plateaus
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- 5Difficult Conversations
- 5Imagined Communities
- 4
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- 4The Goal
- 4
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- 4The Art of War
- 4
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- 4The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
- 4
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- 4The God Delusion
- 4The Blind Watchmaker
- 4The Tao of Pooh
- 4The Elephant in the Brain
- 4The Red Queen
- 4The Toyota Way
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- 3Walden
- 3A People's History of the United States
- 3
- 3
- 3Jonathan Livingston Seagull
- 3A Pattern Language
- 3Narcissus and Goldmund
- 3The Nicomachean Ethics
- 3Enchiridion
- 3The Blank Slate
- 3Philosophical Investigations
- 3Autobiography of a Yogi
- 3Darkness at Noon
- 3The 5 Love Languages
- 3Finnegan's Wake
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- 2The 4-Hour Workweek
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- 2Extreme Ownership
- 2
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- 2Bhagavad Gita
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The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
Julian Jaynes
2 here · 25 all-time · #236 overall
- 2
- 2
- 2
- 2
- 2Peak
- 2Sophie's World
- 2Understanding Power
- 2The Obstacle Is the Way
- 2Behave
- 2The Book of Mormon
- 2The Wisdom of Insecurity
- 2The Metamorphosis
- 2On the Road
- 21491
- 2Bullshit Jobs
- 2Prisoners of Geography
- 2The Millionaire Next Door
- 2The True Believer
- 2Homage to Catalonia
- 2The Extended Phenotype
- 2The Technological Society
- 2Daring Greatly
- 2Thinking in Bets
- 2A New Kind of Science
- 2Dubliners
- 2Free Will
- 2The Art of Worldly Wisdom
- 2QED
- 2The Daily Stoic
- 2Voltaire's Bastards
- 2The Machine Stops
- 2Desert Solitaire
- 2The Surrender Experiment
- 2Food of the Gods
- 2Bad Science
- 2Science and Sanity
- 2The Lessons of History
- 2Of Mice and Men
- 2The Naked Ape
- 2The Sane Society
- 2Origins of Political Order
- 2Dark Emu
- 2History of Sexuality
- 2Cosmic Trigger
- 2Ideas
- 2Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much
Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much
Sendhil Mullainathan
2 here · 3 all-time · #2476 overall
- 2The Ethics of Liberty
- 2Complexity
- 2We the Living
- 2October: The Story of the Russian Revolution
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- 1Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
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Design Patterns
Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, John Vlissides
1 here · 80 all-time · #42 overall
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- 1The Culture
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- 1The Power of Now
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- 1Harry Potter
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- 1Solaris
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- 1The Quran
The Quran
1 here · 27 all-time · #216 overall
- 1The Inner Game of Tennis
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- 1Rationality: From AI to Zombies
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- 1Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces
- 1Foucault's Pendulum
- 1Crossing the Chasm
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- 1The Cyberiad
- 1
- 1Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection
- 1
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- 1The Idea Factory
- 1
- 1Hyperion Cantos
- 1Snowball
- 1I Am That
- 1Mindstorms
- 1In Search of Lost Time
- 1Moonwalking with Einstein
- 1The 4 Hour Work Week
- 1Time Enough for Love
- 1Lila
- 1Radical Candor
- 1Critique of Pure Reason
- 1Economics
- 1The Psychology of Computer Programming
- 1Notes from Underground
- 1This is Water
- 1Ficciones
- 1The Road to Serfdom
- 1The Denial of Death
- 1The Prophet
- 1Amusing Ourselves to Death
- 1The Art of Learning
- 1Getting to Yes
- 1Consider Phlebas
- 1Childhood's End
- 1The Idiot
- 1Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms
- 1Prometheus Rising
- 1Skin in the Game
- 1The Mind's I
- 1Meditations on First Philosophy
- 1A Mind for Numbers
- 1Secrets of Consulting
- 1The New Jim Crow
- 1What Do You Care What Other People Think?
- 1His Master's Voice
- 1The Richest Man in Babylon
- 1Little Brother
- 1The Last Lecture
- 1Propaganda
- 1The First and Last Freedom
- 1The Coddling of the American Mind
- 1Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
- 1Models
- 1Out of the Crisis
- 1Replay
- 1The Peripheral
- 1The Undercover Economist
- 1The Three Musketeers
- 1Our Mathematical Universe
- 1Commonwealth Saga
- 1The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
- 1How Not to Die
- 1Society of Mind
- 1The E-Myth
- 1The Moral Animal
- 1How to Lie with Statistics
- 1Spark
- 1Metaphors We Live By
- 1Tools of Titans
- 1Beyond Good and Evil
- 1The Fifth Discipline
- 1Educated
- 1The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
- 1Anthem
- 1Watership Down
- 1Contact
- 1The Law
- 1The Anatomy of Peace
- 1The Screwtape Letters
- 1Sandman
- 1Between the World and Me
- 1Start With Why
- 1The Rational Optimist
- 1Incerto
- 1The Magus
- 1Phenomenology of Spirit
- 1Emotional Intelligence
- 1Discipline and Punish
- 1My Struggle
- 1The Holy Bible
The Holy Bible
1 here · 8 all-time · #870 overall
- 1Confessions of an Economic Hitman
- 1Darwin's Dangerous Idea
- 1The Lord of the Flies
- 1Das Kapital
- 1Management: A Political Activity
- 1The Doors of Perception
- 1The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching
- 1Wherever You Go, There You Are
- 1Learned Optimism
- 1Incognito
- 1Switch
- 1The Charisma Myth
- 1Lies My Teacher Told Me
- 1Grammatical Man
- 1The Metaphysics
- 1Total Money Makeover
- 1Being and Time
- 1Ethics
- 1The Hero with a Thousand Faces
- 1All the Light We Cannot See
- 1Understanding Media
- 1The Kingdom of God is Within You
- 1Small Is Beautiful
- 1The Art of Loving
- 1Big Bang
- 1How to Stop Worrying and Start Living
- 1Ego Is the Enemy
- 11776
- 1Symposium
- 1Sometimes a Great Notion
- 1The Organized Mind
- 1The World as Will and Representation
- 1Walkaway
- 1A Conflict of Visions
- 1The Story of Philosophy
- 1Martin Eden
- 1Your Money or Your Life
- 1Psycho-Cybernetics
- 1The Logic of Scientific Discovery
- 1The Way of Zen
- 1Babel-17
- 1A Little Life
- 1The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
- 1The Power of Vulnerability
- 1To Have or to Be
- 1The Machine that Changed the World
- 1Normal Accidents
- 1Momo
- 1The Giver
- 1Down and Out in Paris and London
- 1Microserfs
- 1As a Man Thinketh
- 1The Conspiracy Against the Human Race
- 1The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
- 1The Order of Time
- 1The Hidden Persuaders
- 1Galápagos
- 1Why the West Rules for Now
- 1Ascent of Man
- 1The Willpower Instinct
- 1Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
Charles Mackay
1 here · 5 all-time · #1399 overall
- 1Qur'an
- 1Grendel
- 1Letters to a Young Poet
- 1The Conquest of Bread
- 1Practical Ethics
- 1The Colour of Magic
- 1Be Obsessed or Be Average
- 1How to Get What You Want
- 1Hyperspace
- 1Critical Chain
- 1Bird by Bird
- 1strategy
- 1Can't Hurt Me
- 1The Greatest Show On Earth
- 1Dao De Jing
- 1The Corrections
- 1Science, Strategy and War
Science, Strategy and War
1 here · 4 all-time · #1619 overall
- 1From Bacteria to Bach and Back
- 133 Strategies of War
- 1The Castle
- 1Notes on the Synthesis of Form
- 11493
- 1A Treatise of Human Nature
- 1The Mating Mind
- 1Nausea
- 1The Fire Next Time
- 1The Second Sex
- 1The Book of Disquiet
- 1First, Break All the Rules
- 1For a New Liberty
- 1India After Gandhi
- 1Utopia
- 1Physics
- 1Pragmatics of Human Communication
Pragmatics of Human Communication
Paul Watzlawick, Janet Beavin Bavelas, Donald D. Jackson
1 here · 4 all-time · #1775 overall
- 1Deschooling Society
- 1Proverbs
- 1Object Thinking
- 1Steps to an Ecology of Mind
- 1Don't Shoot the Dog
- 1Silence
- 1Eat to Live
- 1The Holy Quran
The Holy Quran
1 here · 3 all-time · #1974 overall
- 1The Compound Effect
- 1Conspiracy
- 1How the World Works
- 1Vanished Kingdoms
- 1C Traps and Pitfalls
- 1In Search of Miraculous
- 1Start with No
- 1Natural Way to Draw
- 1The Pilgrim's Progress
- 1Way of the Peaceful Warrior
- 1Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution
- 1Measuring and Managing Performance in Organizations
- 1Being Wrong
- 1Eat That Frog
- 1The Empowered Manager
- 1Brief Answers to the Big Questions
- 1Let My People Go Surfing
- 1Ecce Homo
- 1What Is Life?
- 1The Promise of Sleep
- 1Out of Control
- 1Leadership BS
- 1The Mezzanine
- 1The Sciences of the Artificial
- 1The Gambler
- 1A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924
A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924
Orlando Figes
1 here · 3 all-time · #2305 overall
- 1The Social Animal
- 1Halo Effect
- 1Phenomenology of Perception
- 1The Trouble with Being Born
- 1The End of Alchemy
- 1Gorgias
- 1American Nations
- 1I Ching
I Ching
1 here · 3 all-time · #2349 overall
- 1The Power of Myth
- 1Society Of The Spectacle
- 1The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need
- 1The Question Concerning Technology
- 1The Oresteia
- 1What Is This Thing Called Science?