3 ms·

Fundamentally changed are so big words but these were pretty cool: - Douglas Hofstadter's GEB: An Eternal Golden Braid - Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David

Fundamentally changed are so big words but these were pretty cool: - Douglas Hofstadter's GEB: An Eternal Golden Braid - Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber - Ursula K. LeGuin's The Word for World is Forest - Propaganda by Edward Bernays - Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond - Empires: The Logic of World Domination from Ancient Rome to the United States by Herfried Münkler - Smedley D. Butler's War is a Racket (more of an exposé) - In Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russell (ditto) - Neuromancer by William Gibson

xitrium 10y ago
Going along with this sort of fundamentally changed worldview theme - I loved Debt: The First 5,000 Years but for me it was equally important to read a book called The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers by Robert L. Heilbroner. This book summarizes the entirety of major paradigms in the history of economic thought, complete with great little biosketches of the authors and their times, from Adam Smith to Joseph Schumpeter. Highly recommended, especially as a counterpoint if you are already a little much in the David Graeber camp as I was.
dakrootie 10y ago
+1 Debt: The First 5000 Years. Fantastic! Especially for economic theory/sociology nerds.
piva00 10y ago
+1 for "In Praise of Idleness", some of the essays from the 20s and 30s that are still contemporary (including one of my favourites Russell's essays: The Ancestry of Fascism) and, of course, the self-titled one is a discussion we see a lot now with all the automation lurking on the horizon. "Neuromancer" I wouldn't say that would be in my list of "fundamentally" changed the way I think, it's a good story with a cool narrative style but in the sci-fi genre I'd put "Childhood's End" way before "Neuromancer" in changing the way I think.

xitrium 10y ago

Going along with this sort of fundamentally changed worldview theme - I loved Debt: The First 5,000 Years but for me it was equally important to read a book called The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers by Robert L. Heilbroner. This book summarizes the entirety of major paradigms in the history of economic thought, complete with great little biosketches of the authors and their times, from Adam Smith to Joseph Schumpeter. Highly recommended, especially as a counterpoint if you are already a little much in the David Graeber camp as I was.

dakrootie 10y ago

+1 Debt: The First 5000 Years. Fantastic! Especially for economic theory/sociology nerds.

piva00 10y ago

+1 for "In Praise of Idleness", some of the essays from the 20s and 30s that are still contemporary (including one of my favourites Russell's essays: The Ancestry of Fascism) and, of course, the self-titled one is a discussion we see a lot now with all the automation lurking on the horizon. "Neuromancer" I wouldn't say that would be in my list of "fundamentally" changed the way I think, it's a good story with a cool narrative style but in the sci-fi genre I'd put "Childhood's End" way before "Neuromancer" in changing the way I think.