5 ms·

What’s the Most Influential Book of the Past 20 Years?

44 points by samclemens 8y ago

dmolony 8y ago
That website will seriously screw with your browser's back button.
- yann63 8y ago
  And I've not even finished to read the first sentence than an overlay slides from the top to make me subscribe to their newsletter or tell me something. I immediately left the site: the back button worked fine for me, but maybe the site had not completely loaded at the time. I am still surprised by this behavior of websites. I guess they did the math and that these practices make them win more than then lose. The web in 2018 is in a poor shape :-( Anyway, back at the topic: which book should, for you, be in the most influencial list? Mine would be "A self-sufficient organic kitchen garden" (automatic tranlation from French "Biopotager autosuffisant"): how to grow yourself enough vegetables to not have to buy any.
WiSaGaN 8y ago
<Capital in the Twenty-First Century> should be in the list. It's a pity that mainstream media still tries to dodge the most pressing problem in US.
marchenko 8y ago
Thinking Fast and Slow and various Malcolm Gladwellania have probably out-influenced anything on that list. Nudge by Sunstein has probably had a lot of subtle influence. The Taleb books, esp. Black Swan should be on the list - he essentially introduced a term into common usage (as Gladwell did with the 10,000 hours idea). Piketty will probably have a long tail of influence. A lot of these books describe social and historical phenomena - they may be the most authoritative scholarly text, but don't really influence broader society as much. The exception would be Critical Race Theory, which has outsized influence both inside and outside of academia.
kstenerud 8y ago
I think it would be more accurate to call it the most influential book for Americans of the past 20 years...
- CJefferson 8y ago
  Also, by an academic, else surely the answer is one of the harry Potter novels
sixhobbits 8y ago
- If you want to find the most influential book, you should probably ask more than a dozen people the question "what is the most influential book". And you should probably look at how frequently certain titles get chosen. Otherwise you just have a list of favourite books from some unrelated academics I've never heard of. - You should also try and include some academics and/or authors outside of America if you want to be taken seriously. - Perhaps also consider, if you insist on doing this through a survey, asking people for some kind of evidence that supports the influential reach of their chosen book. - Finally if you have a list of 20 books arranged vertically so people can can scroll down them, don't have the back button attempt and fail to scroll to each visited location on the page if you expect return visitors. Overall, I see no value in this list beyond any other "hey I like these books I happened to read" type blog and I'll think twice before clicking on a chronicle link in future.
- yann63 8y ago
  Is there a way to completely blacklist web sites such as this one? Such as a Firefox extension than would, in my browser, remove results from search engines, entries from hackernews, and so on? There are tons of them where articles are meaningless, and a waste of time.
- CPLX 8y ago
  > Overall, I see no value in this list beyond any other "hey I like these books I happened to read" But... that’s valuable.
  - weego 8y ago
    Only if the opinion of the people you ask is considered valuable.
    - CPLX 8y ago
      Not really. Unless made by Nazis or people under the age of 7 I’m pretty much always interested in skimming a thoughtful list of nonfiction book recommendations.
odiroot 8y ago
The Quran?
- fredoliveira 8y ago
  ... was certainly not written in the past 20 years.
  - Geee 8y ago
    He probably meant that Quran has had the most influence on the world in the past 20 years.
DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
Putnam's Bowling Alone was so good it was listed twice.
soneca 8y ago
Misleading title. This is an opinion of influential books "written by an academic". It is implicit as this an academics website, but in HN it is out of this context. And to quote the article itself "Ideally, then, the candidates would be like On the Origin of Species or Das Kapital or The Interpretation of Dreams. But those books were written more than 100 years ago, and none by an academic.". So there is a case to be made that academics written books are not that influential.
- improbable22 8y ago
  Also, nobody answered the question -- they answered instead "what book by an academic (near my field) deserves more influence". Which if this is a gift shopping list is a more useful question. But largely separate from what books have been influential already.
- CPLX 8y ago
  The title has a question mark at the end. The article then contains the various answers of a variety of people they posed that question to. The publication is called the chronicle of higher education and the people they asked for their thoughts on the answer all work in higher education. That seems like exactly the kind of thing I’d expect to see when clicking on that headline.
- Emma_Goldman 8y ago
  Intellectual life only became professionalised in the 20th century. So no, that's not the implication. Marx was funded by Engels, whose father owned a factory in Manchester. Darwin was funded by his parents. Thankfully, scholars no longer need to depend upon the wealth of their parents and connections.
DrNuke 8y ago
“The Mechatronics Handbook”, 2nd ed., 2007, is mostly past it today but was a milestone for mankind in so many fields.
throwaway9980 8y ago
What a narrow minded list. I can think of at least three titles that have surely been more influential on society: PHP & MySQL for Dummies, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, and Fifty Shades of Grey. We’d all like to believe otherwise of course, but these types of titles that have massive reach are doing far more to influence lives than academic fare.
- DanBC 8y ago
  I agree with you, but Harry Potter was first published in 1997. That makes it outside the 20 year window that this article is focusing on. In the UK we have the Mann Booker prize. It's a big deal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booker_Prize https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booker_Prize > The winner of the Man Booker Prize is generally assured international renown and success; therefore, the prize is of great significance for the book trade. But the sales figures for the books are tiny. https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/oct/10/booker-prize-2012-winners-sales-data https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/oct/10/booker... https://www.npr.org/2015/09/19/441459103/when-it-comes-to-book-sales-what-counts-as-success-might-surprise-you https://www.npr.org/2015/09/19/441459103/when-it-comes-to-bo...
  - throwaway9980 8y ago
    I stand corrected and feel quite old. Hard to believe it’s been 21 years since Harry Potter. Next up: Harry Potter and the Midlife Crisis.
internet555 8y ago
Don Quixote

44 points by samclemens 8y ago

dmolony 8y ago

That website will seriously screw with your browser's back button.

yann63 8y ago
And I've not even finished to read the first sentence than an overlay slides from the top to make me subscribe to their newsletter or tell me something. I immediately left the site: the back button worked fine for me, but maybe the site had not completely loaded at the time. I am still surprised by this behavior of websites. I guess they did the math and that these practices make them win more than then lose. The web in 2018 is in a poor shape :-( Anyway, back at the topic: which book should, for you, be in the most influencial list? Mine would be "A self-sufficient organic kitchen garden" (automatic tranlation from French "Biopotager autosuffisant"): how to grow yourself enough vegetables to not have to buy any.

WiSaGaN 8y ago

<Capital in the Twenty-First Century> should be in the list. It's a pity that mainstream media still tries to dodge the most pressing problem in US.

marchenko 8y ago

Thinking Fast and Slow and various Malcolm Gladwellania have probably out-influenced anything on that list. Nudge by Sunstein has probably had a lot of subtle influence. The Taleb books, esp. Black Swan should be on the list - he essentially introduced a term into common usage (as Gladwell did with the 10,000 hours idea). Piketty will probably have a long tail of influence. A lot of these books describe social and historical phenomena - they may be the most authoritative scholarly text, but don't really influence broader society as much. The exception would be Critical Race Theory, which has outsized influence both inside and outside of academia.

kstenerud 8y ago

I think it would be more accurate to call it the most influential book for Americans of the past 20 years...

CJefferson 8y ago
Also, by an academic, else surely the answer is one of the harry Potter novels

sixhobbits 8y ago

- If you want to find the most influential book, you should probably ask more than a dozen people the question "what is the most influential book". And you should probably look at how frequently certain titles get chosen. Otherwise you just have a list of favourite books from some unrelated academics I've never heard of. - You should also try and include some academics and/or authors outside of America if you want to be taken seriously. - Perhaps also consider, if you insist on doing this through a survey, asking people for some kind of evidence that supports the influential reach of their chosen book. - Finally if you have a list of 20 books arranged vertically so people can can scroll down them, don't have the back button attempt and fail to scroll to each visited location on the page if you expect return visitors. Overall, I see no value in this list beyond any other "hey I like these books I happened to read" type blog and I'll think twice before clicking on a chronicle link in future.

yann63 8y ago
Is there a way to completely blacklist web sites such as this one? Such as a Firefox extension than would, in my browser, remove results from search engines, entries from hackernews, and so on? There are tons of them where articles are meaningless, and a waste of time.
CPLX 8y ago
> Overall, I see no value in this list beyond any other "hey I like these books I happened to read" But... that’s valuable.
- weego 8y ago
  Only if the opinion of the people you ask is considered valuable.
  - CPLX 8y ago
    Not really. Unless made by Nazis or people under the age of 7 I’m pretty much always interested in skimming a thoughtful list of nonfiction book recommendations.

odiroot 8y ago

The Quran?

fredoliveira 8y ago
... was certainly not written in the past 20 years.
- Geee 8y ago
  He probably meant that Quran has had the most influence on the world in the past 20 years.

DyslexicAtheist 8y ago

Putnam's Bowling Alone was so good it was listed twice.

soneca 8y ago

Misleading title. This is an opinion of influential books "written by an academic". It is implicit as this an academics website, but in HN it is out of this context. And to quote the article itself "Ideally, then, the candidates would be like On the Origin of Species or Das Kapital or The Interpretation of Dreams. But those books were written more than 100 years ago, and none by an academic.". So there is a case to be made that academics written books are not that influential.

improbable22 8y ago
Also, nobody answered the question -- they answered instead "what book by an academic (near my field) deserves more influence". Which if this is a gift shopping list is a more useful question. But largely separate from what books have been influential already.
CPLX 8y ago
The title has a question mark at the end. The article then contains the various answers of a variety of people they posed that question to. The publication is called the chronicle of higher education and the people they asked for their thoughts on the answer all work in higher education. That seems like exactly the kind of thing I’d expect to see when clicking on that headline.
Emma_Goldman 8y ago
Intellectual life only became professionalised in the 20th century. So no, that's not the implication. Marx was funded by Engels, whose father owned a factory in Manchester. Darwin was funded by his parents. Thankfully, scholars no longer need to depend upon the wealth of their parents and connections.

DrNuke 8y ago

“The Mechatronics Handbook”, 2nd ed., 2007, is mostly past it today but was a milestone for mankind in so many fields.

throwaway9980 8y ago

What a narrow minded list. I can think of at least three titles that have surely been more influential on society: PHP & MySQL for Dummies, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, and Fifty Shades of Grey. We’d all like to believe otherwise of course, but these types of titles that have massive reach are doing far more to influence lives than academic fare.

DanBC 8y ago
I agree with you, but Harry Potter was first published in 1997. That makes it outside the 20 year window that this article is focusing on. In the UK we have the Mann Booker prize. It's a big deal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booker_Prize https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booker_Prize > The winner of the Man Booker Prize is generally assured international renown and success; therefore, the prize is of great significance for the book trade. But the sales figures for the books are tiny. https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/oct/10/booker-prize-2012-winners-sales-data https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/oct/10/booker... https://www.npr.org/2015/09/19/441459103/when-it-comes-to-book-sales-what-counts-as-success-might-surprise-you https://www.npr.org/2015/09/19/441459103/when-it-comes-to-bo...
- throwaway9980 8y ago
  I stand corrected and feel quite old. Hard to believe it’s been 21 years since Harry Potter. Next up: Harry Potter and the Midlife Crisis.

internet555 8y ago

Don Quixote