I'm not sure I agree with this. I still quote things I learned from Freakonomics - the babysitter thing, the prostitution thing, abortions, and the MBA gangste

I'm not sure I agree with this. I still quote things I learned from Freakonomics - the babysitter thing, the prostitution thing, abortions, and the MBA gangster thing for example. Maybe it fell out because it wasn't a primary source, people who remember the stories just look it up and share the story directly. My favorite book that failed the test of time is The Startup Owner's Manual, Bob Dorf and Steve Blank (2012). It's pretty amazing, literally a checklist on how to build a startup. It might be why it's not popular. It smells like a textbook. It takes all the mystery out of building startups - people want to know that they failed because they were unlucky, not because they didn't follow a checklist. The original TDD by Example (2000) is great too, but now there's a million TDD books and consultants. Many of these have never read the original. It was meant to be easy, for dumb people who can't code better. There's a little guide at the end of the book for when you get stuck on these things. Clean Code (2008) is still making the rounds, and I don't think anyone understood it. I ask people why they make one line functions and they quote the book. It seems more popular as a way to justify bad code rather than being best practice.