Against the Grain
Internal Combustion
Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia
These all caused me to examine aspects of modern society that we usually just accept blindly
this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2023
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Not sure if they all fit entirely but:
- The Story Of Stuff (Annie Leonard)
- How The World Works (Noam Chomsky)
- Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions (Dan Ariely)
- The Hidden Brain (Shankar Vedantam) / Idiot Brain (Dean Burnett)
- The Myth Of Choice (Kent Greenfield) / The Paradox Of Choice (Barry Schwartz)
- The Free Will Delusion: How We Settled For The Illusion Of Morality (James B. Miles)
- Getting Free: Creating An Association Of Democratic Autonomous Neighborhoods (James Herod)
- The Best That Money Can't Buy (Jacque Fresco)
- No Contest: The Case Against Competition (Alfie Kohn)
I've been meaning to start reading some Chomsky & Alfie Kohn! Both very revolutionary writers from the reviews I've been checking out
Predictably Irrational is really good.
I feel like I read Chomsky's books at a key point in my life where I didn't really get all of it but it primed me for later learning. Good list overall 👍🏼
Carl Sagan - A Demon-Haunted World. Explains the key difference between a scientific vs religious mindset.
On Writing - If you want to write and and are able to ignore advice that doesn’t fit your style, I’ve always found this a nice inspiring comfort read (the audiobook is great!)
I've read Taking the War Out of Our Words and found it really enlightening. It wasn't a paradigm shift, but it really shows how the way we speak is naturally adversarial and how we can overcome that. It's especially useful when talking with people you disagree with.
Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter
Reading this (or trying to) is like being on drugs. You go from “What in god’s name is the author smoking?” to some kind of nirvana.
The Tao of Pooh, the Te of Piglet, and the Tao Te Ching.
I’m gonna say my top non fiction books are:
The Narnia series, who knew that lions could be found in seemingly ordinary closets! Wow!
Harry Potter series, if I had known about hogwarts before i went to college I would definitely have applied there.
And then probably Wikipedia, man there is a lot of info on that book
You really can't trust Wikipedia as a true non fiction source. People make stuff up in there all the time.
Same with Harry Potter. I don't say it's all made up but we have only one source and a biased one at best. She's a literal terf. Don't believe anything she says.
Gotta be “Confessions of an Economic Hitman”
Hyperspace by Michio Kaku
Thank You For Arguing.
Learning about rhetoric and how the truth isn't necessarily persuasive has been really valuable in the post-truth era.
The divide: a brief guide to global inequality and its solutions by Jason Hickel
Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence helped me get better at every relationship in my life.
Can you elaborate a bit? Amazon reviews make it sound more academic and less actionable.
Yes, it's definitely more academic than practical, but that's really what I needed. I had read plenty of books that told me what I should do, but not why I'm doing it. By learning the theory I could be more improvisational in my interactions with confidence.
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. Every time there was an experiential experiment in the book, I put it down and tried it for myself. I possibly changed more over the course of reading that book than at any other period in my life.
Guns Germs and Steel. I remember feeling, after I read it, that I saw things differently. But now the ideas presented in it seem the most natural things in the world, and I can't imagine I ever thought otherwise. Or maybe I had the same views before but not historical foundations for them.. I can hardly remember now.
It’s a book that historians scoff at. It’s all narrative and no science apart from few cherry picked examples.
“Our Fake History” has an episode on it, and as a topic it’s spot on for that show.
I read Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain at some point during the First World War centenary. I'm also roughly 100 years younger than Vera Brittain, so I was very close to her age during WW1. I knew the facts of WW1 before, but it hit me really hard to think about a whole generation of young people (of the countries involved) having their youth drowned in a war. And the pointlessness of it all. It made me really grateful for the circumstances I was lucky enough to grow up in.
The Five Love Languages - explains the inner workings of love, and how to sustain long term relationships, especially marriage
The Art of War- expressed better than any other piece I've read the rationale of war. War is conflict and understanding both the enemy and yourself is the only way to effective success.
Atomic Habits- the best way to improve your life is to improve the minutia of it by just 1%. Applies rationale to how we operate while on auto pilot and gives effective solutions to combat the negative habits we fall into.
The Way of Monkey Book- an amazing, modern lens to stoicism and individually written in the style of eastern texts. While the author is deplorable to say the least, the message and morals of the work brilliantly reflect the ebb and flow of nature and the distortion of such through the actions of the average man.
When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World's Most Powerful Consulting Firm by Michael Forsyth and Walt Bogdanich. A cutting expose into the forces that are shaping our society that most don't see.
The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America—and How to Undo His Legacy by David Gelles. Gives you a better understanding of the philosophies that shaped corporate offshoring, outsourcing and sell offs from the 70s to today.
Currowan: A Story of Fire and Community During Australia's Worst Summer by Bronwyn Adcock. A revealing firsthand account of what it's like to live through the catastrophic real life effects of climate change.
A Good Place on the Banks of the Euphrates: Stories from the War Against ISIS by Warren Stoddard II. A frightening and inspiring collection of short stories and diary entries from the perspective of an internationalist fighter on the ground.
The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton. A digestible collection of reassuring practical tactics to understanding personal attitudes and behaviours as framed by some of history's most influential philosophers.
The World is Flat - Tom Friedman
It was a paradigm shift for me because of the time that I read it and the decisions I needed to make at the time. A case of good timing. Your results may vary
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
I have the feeling a Sapiens might be a worthy member of such a list. I haven't read it yet though. I'd love to hear someone's opinion who has.
The Ego and Its Own, by Max Stirner.
Made me see individualism, society and ideology completely differently.
Finding The Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard. Completely changed my understanding of woodlands, nature itself, and the world in general.
if wikipedia count's then that