4 ms·

Surprised that The Art of War and Heart of Darkness are missing.

blumkvist 13y ago
Agreed. Mein Kampf, Atlas Shrugged, Fountainhead and Strike towards freedom deserve mentions too. Also the list shows a striking lack of science fiction. Neuromancer, Do androids dream of electric sheep, Lovecraft, Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, Dune, Foundation series by Asimov, Jules Vern's works, Time machine by H.G. Wells are some very influential titles. Shakespeare's work is missing also.
- digitalengineer 13y ago
  That first one does not deserve to be there. As a book it didn't represent any original theory or 'higher' thought. Just the ramblings of a prisoner with too much time on his hands.
  - blumkvist 13y ago
    The list is about influential books, not works that introduce original ideas. IMO Mien Kampf fits the requirements to be influential.
    - drjesusphd 13y ago
      Was the book actually influential, or just the author?
- dmoo 13y ago
  First Folio is on the list. Also I guess books which stand the test of time are more likely to be seen as influential so science fiction has a while to wait.
- navait 13y ago
  >...Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, Dune, Foundation series by Asimov... It's the most influential books ever written, not a list of books the HN crowd is most likely to have read. I think there's an argument for HG wells, but Dune? really?
  - blumkvist 13y ago
    Dune has influenced or flat out inspired plethora of writers and their novels and films. The most popular, I'd say is Star Wars, which is arguably the most recognized film of all time. Dune, in one way or another, has touched majority of the people who are alive today. And that is leaving the techno-psychological, political, sociological and philosophical arguments in the novels aside. HG2G does not belong to the list, I agree, dunno what I was thinking when including it. And if you don't call Asimov's work influential, I don't know what else constitutes as such.* * if we agree that when talking about sci-fi we should waive the test-of-time argument
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - jljljl 13y ago
      It feels a little early to make this call. Dune has influenced a certain vision of the future, but it's influence has been limited to a specific genre of literature and art. It also remains to be seen whether Dune is influential beyond the current cultural zeitgeist, since it hasn't even been around for a century yet. It's entirely possible another book or movie will come around that changes the entire aesthetic of speculative fiction, leaving Dune as a book that was popular for a particular culture as a particular time.
- VLM 13y ago
  JRR Tolkien Its interesting to compare the Venn diagram of this list of influential books vs "old books you should actually read as opposed to know about to consider yourself educated". I've read Gibbon and Plutarch and Kafka and Orwell and Thucydides and Thoreau and quite a few of the others and enjoyed them immensely. I've read some of the others on the list and not enjoyed them so much. I've glanced at Principia and a couple others and Nope'd. Maxwell, no, not going to happen. I self educated on what amounts to a great books curricula when I was a kid. Any teenage boy who claims not to like Anabasis or maybe Plutarch either has something wrong with him or is lying about having read it (or maybe got stuck with an awful translation). Some of it was tiresome, having to haul books from old fashioned public library or pay serious money in some cases. The modern tech world should be better but it isn't. Anyway bringing it on topic for YC / HN we now have the technology to give everyone in the world a handheld device with not only "the" great books curriculum but any collection of great books curricula, although the whole "product" is not quite there... maybe only 99% of the way and terribly expensive. And that last 1% is going to be hard. I have no idea how a startup would fix that last little bit, but I'd love to see one try. Maybe a really good (free, or close to) ereader and study app containing various collections of curricula, some of which like the gutenberg editions require a bit of massaging and tidying up. Also needs some kind of markup language / links to wikipedia / merged with academic notes. A little more education wouldn't be the end of the world.
  - minopret 13y ago
    Many of these are surprisingly very readable, particularly if you're willing to wade into their world. For example, I find it hilarious that, in The Republic, Glaucon (if I recall correctly) complains directly about Socrates using his method that has sometimes impressed all of us or been impressed upon us as the irrefutable voice of authority. He says, practically in so many words, "You're just being a smart aleck! You ask a bunch of leading questions and get smug when we don't have immediate criticisms for your supposedly inevitable answers! But all it really means is that they're different from suggestions that we've heard before!" On the other hand, I had little success trudging through An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke. So, I'd suggest that a reader who makes a patient attempt will find that many of them open up and become old friends. If not, I wouldn't bother to suffer through. There are plenty of books to try. You can always try one again in another decade or perhaps another lifetime.
- nirnira 13y ago
  Come on, almost all those novels are less than a hundred years old, and have only really been of influence to a small underworld of people - an underworld which is only now just starting to make a real impact on the world. Maybe in a thousand years those books will have shown their true influence, but right now, they're still far too fresh, and alternative. The books on this list, however, are mostly centuries old (or even older) and were hugely influential to generations upon generations of humans - shaping untold thoughts, feelings, and actions - and laying the intellectual and emotional foundations of the modern world (foundations we take for granted, which is why we can take these books for granted).
  - blumkvist 13y ago
    There are a lot of authors on the list which are from the same time period. Mao, Marx, Freud, Orwell, Norbert Wiener, Kafka.
    - jljljl 13y ago
      Mao and Marx altered the course of nations. Freud and Weiner created fields which have had a major impact on medicine, education, social theory, and technology, and may of those impacts have trickled down into everyday life. You can make an argument against The Trial and 1984, but I'm skeptical many people will agree that they were less influential than any of the books you listed.
      - blumkvist 13y ago
        I don't like comperative statements when talking about exceptional work. Can you say the Beatles are more popular/influential than Queen? How can you even decide something like that? The words themselves (exceptional,influential) do not have comparative/superlative forms. Agreed on Mao and Marx. I'd argue that HGW, Verne and Asimov created or helped significantly in shaping a literary genre which has a high impact on our psychological and cultural behavior and currently paves the way to our future. Whether their ideas last only a 100 years is irrelevant. Is Baroque, or better yet - Rococo - irrelevant? There will be a handful of books that make a big, permament paradigm shift in society as a whole (or in big parts of it). But in order for the authors who will write those books to be born, society has to constantly move and spawn new trends.
- ZanyProgrammer 13y ago
  "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged . One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.”
  - DonGateley 13y ago
    Then, of course, there is Catcher in the Rye, the most damaging book ever written. Completely ruined two generations at the least. Made effete and cynical cool and we've yet to recover the hard nosed optimism that infused us with greatness for a too short a while. I sincerely wish we'd lost Salinger in the war.
- Confusion 13y ago
  Another day, another American overestimating the relevance of Ayn Rand. Outside of the US, barely anyone reads Ayn Rand or cares about her. It's considered to be 'capitalist bullshit' as much as Americans consider Marx 'commie bullshit'. Of course both are wrong, but in the final analysis, Marx actually offered profound insights and is still being read widely. Ayn Rand will be forgotten in a few dozen years.
myrandomcomment 13y ago
It is, sort of. On War by Carl Von Clausewitz which he took from the Art Of War.

Agreed. Mein Kampf, Atlas Shrugged, Fountainhead and Strike towards freedom deserve mentions too. Also the list shows a striking lack of science fiction. Neuromancer, Do androids dream of electric sheep, Lovecraft, Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, Dune, Foundation series by Asimov, Jules Vern's works, Time machine by H.G. Wells are some very influential titles. Shakespeare's work is missing also.

digitalengineer 13y ago
That first one does not deserve to be there. As a book it didn't represent any original theory or 'higher' thought. Just the ramblings of a prisoner with too much time on his hands.
- blumkvist 13y ago
  The list is about influential books, not works that introduce original ideas. IMO Mien Kampf fits the requirements to be influential.
  - drjesusphd 13y ago
    Was the book actually influential, or just the author?
dmoo 13y ago
First Folio is on the list. Also I guess books which stand the test of time are more likely to be seen as influential so science fiction has a while to wait.
navait 13y ago
>...Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, Dune, Foundation series by Asimov... It's the most influential books ever written, not a list of books the HN crowd is most likely to have read. I think there's an argument for HG wells, but Dune? really?
- blumkvist 13y ago
  Dune has influenced or flat out inspired plethora of writers and their novels and films. The most popular, I'd say is Star Wars, which is arguably the most recognized film of all time. Dune, in one way or another, has touched majority of the people who are alive today. And that is leaving the techno-psychological, political, sociological and philosophical arguments in the novels aside. HG2G does not belong to the list, I agree, dunno what I was thinking when including it. And if you don't call Asimov's work influential, I don't know what else constitutes as such.* * if we agree that when talking about sci-fi we should waive the test-of-time argument
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - jljljl 13y ago
    It feels a little early to make this call. Dune has influenced a certain vision of the future, but it's influence has been limited to a specific genre of literature and art. It also remains to be seen whether Dune is influential beyond the current cultural zeitgeist, since it hasn't even been around for a century yet. It's entirely possible another book or movie will come around that changes the entire aesthetic of speculative fiction, leaving Dune as a book that was popular for a particular culture as a particular time.
VLM 13y ago
JRR Tolkien Its interesting to compare the Venn diagram of this list of influential books vs "old books you should actually read as opposed to know about to consider yourself educated". I've read Gibbon and Plutarch and Kafka and Orwell and Thucydides and Thoreau and quite a few of the others and enjoyed them immensely. I've read some of the others on the list and not enjoyed them so much. I've glanced at Principia and a couple others and Nope'd. Maxwell, no, not going to happen. I self educated on what amounts to a great books curricula when I was a kid. Any teenage boy who claims not to like Anabasis or maybe Plutarch either has something wrong with him or is lying about having read it (or maybe got stuck with an awful translation). Some of it was tiresome, having to haul books from old fashioned public library or pay serious money in some cases. The modern tech world should be better but it isn't. Anyway bringing it on topic for YC / HN we now have the technology to give everyone in the world a handheld device with not only "the" great books curriculum but any collection of great books curricula, although the whole "product" is not quite there... maybe only 99% of the way and terribly expensive. And that last 1% is going to be hard. I have no idea how a startup would fix that last little bit, but I'd love to see one try. Maybe a really good (free, or close to) ereader and study app containing various collections of curricula, some of which like the gutenberg editions require a bit of massaging and tidying up. Also needs some kind of markup language / links to wikipedia / merged with academic notes. A little more education wouldn't be the end of the world.
- minopret 13y ago
  Many of these are surprisingly very readable, particularly if you're willing to wade into their world. For example, I find it hilarious that, in The Republic, Glaucon (if I recall correctly) complains directly about Socrates using his method that has sometimes impressed all of us or been impressed upon us as the irrefutable voice of authority. He says, practically in so many words, "You're just being a smart aleck! You ask a bunch of leading questions and get smug when we don't have immediate criticisms for your supposedly inevitable answers! But all it really means is that they're different from suggestions that we've heard before!" On the other hand, I had little success trudging through An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke. So, I'd suggest that a reader who makes a patient attempt will find that many of them open up and become old friends. If not, I wouldn't bother to suffer through. There are plenty of books to try. You can always try one again in another decade or perhaps another lifetime.
nirnira 13y ago
Come on, almost all those novels are less than a hundred years old, and have only really been of influence to a small underworld of people - an underworld which is only now just starting to make a real impact on the world. Maybe in a thousand years those books will have shown their true influence, but right now, they're still far too fresh, and alternative. The books on this list, however, are mostly centuries old (or even older) and were hugely influential to generations upon generations of humans - shaping untold thoughts, feelings, and actions - and laying the intellectual and emotional foundations of the modern world (foundations we take for granted, which is why we can take these books for granted).
- blumkvist 13y ago
  There are a lot of authors on the list which are from the same time period. Mao, Marx, Freud, Orwell, Norbert Wiener, Kafka.
  - jljljl 13y ago
    Mao and Marx altered the course of nations. Freud and Weiner created fields which have had a major impact on medicine, education, social theory, and technology, and may of those impacts have trickled down into everyday life. You can make an argument against The Trial and 1984, but I'm skeptical many people will agree that they were less influential than any of the books you listed.
    - blumkvist 13y ago
      I don't like comperative statements when talking about exceptional work. Can you say the Beatles are more popular/influential than Queen? How can you even decide something like that? The words themselves (exceptional,influential) do not have comparative/superlative forms. Agreed on Mao and Marx. I'd argue that HGW, Verne and Asimov created or helped significantly in shaping a literary genre which has a high impact on our psychological and cultural behavior and currently paves the way to our future. Whether their ideas last only a 100 years is irrelevant. Is Baroque, or better yet - Rococo - irrelevant? There will be a handful of books that make a big, permament paradigm shift in society as a whole (or in big parts of it). But in order for the authors who will write those books to be born, society has to constantly move and spawn new trends.
ZanyProgrammer 13y ago
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged . One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.”
- DonGateley 13y ago
  Then, of course, there is Catcher in the Rye, the most damaging book ever written. Completely ruined two generations at the least. Made effete and cynical cool and we've yet to recover the hard nosed optimism that infused us with greatness for a too short a while. I sincerely wish we'd lost Salinger in the war.
Confusion 13y ago
Another day, another American overestimating the relevance of Ayn Rand. Outside of the US, barely anyone reads Ayn Rand or cares about her. It's considered to be 'capitalist bullshit' as much as Americans consider Marx 'commie bullshit'. Of course both are wrong, but in the final analysis, Marx actually offered profound insights and is still being read widely. Ayn Rand will be forgotten in a few dozen years.

myrandomcomment 13y ago

It is, sort of. On War by Carl Von Clausewitz which he took from the Art Of War.