[helicopter34234]

Any one read any "must read" books lately that they learned a lot from?

I am always looking to broaden my knowledge base. I am getting a PhD in mechanical engineering so I get plenty of technical training in math and science. Since I eventually will be working in industry, I want to supplement that education by reading a variety of books in my spare time. I like stuff related to business, management, money, how the world works, globalization, etc. Any other knowledge that is useful for your every day life is also desired. I don't actually read any of the books, I listen to them on audiobook while I am driving, walking, riding my bike, lifting weights, etc.

Recently I have read
Brief History of Time
Short History of Nearly Everything
Ideas That Shaped Mankind
The World is Flat
Freakonomics
The Undercover Economist
A Random Walk Down Wall Street
Winning (by Jack Welch)
On Writing Well

I just bought
Elements of Style
Barbarians at the Gates and Liars Poker (Wall Street books)

And I want to rent from the librarySnowball (on Warren Buffet)
Call Me Ted
Last Lecture
And a few of the word smart books to expand my vocab

 

[panda]

graduate to actually reading the literature first, then worry about good content.

 

[jonathanjong]

I'm not sure popular science books make people smarter, actually. Hats off to the authors for trying, but it's really, really hard to get pop-sci right. But since you asked, here are some from the life sciences, in no particular order:
1. Start with The Richness of Life by Stephen J. Gould, and if you like it, get the rest of his essay collections.
2. Read The Selfish Gene and Extended Phenotype. Possible also the Blind Watchmaker. These are Richard Dawkins at his best. His more anti-religious books are...meh.
3. Endless Forms Most Wonderful is another great book on evolution, this time from a developmental genetics perspective. Sean Carroll should write more books.

From the social sciences, I can only recommend Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel with a clear conscience.

You might find Feynman's books - mostly autobiographical rather than technical - interesting too.

And finally, I think every science student and practitioner should read some philosophy. We should start with epistemology or philosophy of science. For epistemology, I highly recommend Alan Musgrave's Common Sense, Science, and Scepticism. For philosophy of science, I recommend Peter Godfrey-Smith's Theory and Reality. For philosophy of biology, I'd go for Paul Griffith and Kim Sterelny's (slightly dated) Sex and Death.

I realize that my list is...quite different from your fields of interest, but I think learning more about the life sciences is pretty important nowadays, what with the heated discussions about the matter. Also, I've read my fair share of pop-business or pop-economics, and I can't recommend any of them. Freakonomics is probably the best there is (there aren't many, really), but even that contains too many over-simplifications for comfort. As I said, pop-sci (etc.) is really tough to write, and hats off to the ones who try, but there are bound to be more misses than hits.

 

[jonathanjong]

Ooh, I forgot to mention:

A lot of scientists neglect the humanities, and this includes good literature. It's a different kind of "smart", I guess, but there's something missing if all you read is technical (or popular) science-y stuff. You mentioned wanting to learn words and stuff. Well, start with Dickens and Woolf, maybe. Or if you're more comfortable with contemporary fiction, go read Catch 22 or To Kill a Mockingbird, etc. Or more contemporary still...Margaret Atwood, Kate Atkinson, Nick Hornby, perhaps?

Time for a High Fidelity quote:
Hey, I'm not the smartest guy in the world, but I'm certainly not the dumbest. I mean, I've read books like "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" and "Love in the Time of Cholera", and I think I've understood them. They're about girls, right? Just kidding. But I have to say my all-time favorite book is Johnny Cash's autobiography "Cash" by Johnny Cash.

 

[MASantos]

Read a bit of everything.

Read some decent literature, Dickens, Verne, Angelou, Dubois, Wilde, Stevenson, and so on.

Read poetry as well, as it can be inspiring for many other things.

Read novels, economics books, science, the daily newspaper, read whatever you like, and also read some things you don't like, and read a lot!

 

[yashicaman]

As a sociology prof, I'd recommend that you read stuff by Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber. On a more practical level, you might want to read stuff on globalization and critiques of modern socity. Try the books by Thomas Friedman, i.e., The World is Flat. George Ritzer's The McDonaldization of Society is excellent. On a lighter note, try some of the collections of comic strip genius, like Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts, Doonsbury, Bloom County, etc.

Films are nice too. Try the series by Film Movement (independent films--I've been subscribing since the inception of this organization).

I also like the Science Fiction pulps, like Analog, Asimov's, and Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Given my research interests, I've been reading novels by Brazilian, Chinese, Indian (as in India) and Nigerian writers. I'm not sure if you'd care to go here, but if you are interested, I could make a few recommendations.

Cheers!

 

[yashicaman]

Here are a few authors that I particularly like:

Dorthy Sayers
Nicholas Freeling
Janwillem van de Wetering
Franz Kafka
Dino Buzzati
Celine
Flannery O'Connor
Graham Greene
Hannah Arendt
Michel Foucault
Antonio Gramsci
Roland Barthes
Umberto Eco
Italo Calvino
Jorge Amado
Paulo Friere
Jorge Luis Borges
Doris Lessing
Gabriel Jose Garcia Marquez
Philip Jose Farmer
Douglas Adams

 

[ZephyrSapphire]

 

[Agnostic]

David Deutsch - The Fabric Of Reality
David Chalmers - The Conscious Mind
Paul K. Feyerabend - Against Method
Paul K. Feyerabend - The Conquest Of Abundance
Douglas R. Hofstadter - I Am A Strange Loop
Chuang Tzu - Chuang Tzu (OR Zhuang Zhi - Zhuang Zhi depending on system of transcription)
Zygmunt Bauman - Modernity And The Holocaust
Brian Greene - The Fabric Of The Cosmos

And I have to second jonathanjong's suggestions of
Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel and Feynman

 

[jonathanjong]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Agnostic /img/forum/go_quote.gif Paul K. Feyerabend - Against Method Paul K. Feyerabend - The Conquest Of Abundance ... Douglas R. Hofstadter - I Am A Strange Loop

Ahhh, scientific anarchist! Die! Die!

Anyway, that reminded me to mention: Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge. Possibly the most important philosophy of science essay collection of the 20th century. Edited by Alan Musgrave and Imre Lakatos, featuring articles by Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, and Feyeraband. Could you really ask for more?

Agnostic, did you not prefer Godel, Escher, Bach over I am a Strange Loop? I should read them side by side (or in series) again, but when I was reading IaaSL, I remembered being more convinced (and less bored) by GEB.

Lastly, that reminds me of another excellent essay collection: The Mind's I, edited by Dan Dennett and Doug Hofstadter. It's philosophy of mind/artificial intelligence stuff.

OK OK, one last one: Since Marx and Durkheim were mentioned, I think Darwin deserves one too. The Origin of Species is a remarkably readable book, even after 150 years.

P.S.: Agnostic, we read similar books! Always glad to find people with similar interests. I'm not agnostic myself, though. Well, on most days, anyway.

 

[rlanger]

I would recommend Malcolm Gladwell. I haven't started his newest book, Outliers, yet, but both Tipping Point and Blink should be required reading in Smarts 101.

 

[jonathanjong]

Gah, must resist commenting on other peoples' book recommendations...

FAIL.

Erm, Gladwell writes well, and I would recommend Blink, but stopping at Blink would give a skewed perspective on intuitive decision making. He over-simplifies the matter in the book. But yes, that should be required reading in Smarts 101. Or at least Keeping Informed 101.

 

[rlanger]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jonathanjong /img/forum/go_quote.gif Gah, must resist commenting on other peoples' book recommendations... FAIL. Erm, Gladwell writes well, and I would recommend Blink, but stopping at Blink would give a skewed perspective on intuitive decision making. He over-simplifies the matter in the book. But yes, that should be required reading in Smarts 101. Or at least Keeping Informed 101.

Yes, we are talking about a starting point. That's why I qualified it as a good place to begin.

I think most people would prefer a good starting point for this sort of material, to determine if it is of interest first, rather than jumping right in to some definitive treatise.

Gladwell, himself, is quite good at pointing readers in a direction to further their study by sharing interesting examples to support his arguments.

 

[Rednamalas1]

totally misread the thread title and got excited. Man I need to learn how to read.

 

[jonathanjong]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rlanger /img/forum/go_quote.gif Yes, we are talking about a starting point. That's why I qualified it as a good place to begin. I think most people would prefer a good starting point for this sort of material, to determine if it is of interest first, rather than jumping right in to some definitive treatise. Gladwell, himself, is quite good at pointing readers in a direction to further their study by sharing interesting examples to support his arguments.

I didn't see a qualification...but perhaps you mean the "101" bit.

But yes, all in agreement!