Ever since I read Guns, Germs, and Steel, and then more books like it, I started a mental category of “books that changed the way I see the world.” These books have a few things in common: they are non-fiction; they often span eras; they present grand theories based on solid evidence; they’re engagingly written for a relatively broad audience; in most cases, I couldn’t put them down, finishing them in a short amount of time, and then buttonholed all my friends telling them to read the book; years later, I still find myself referring to ideas or tidbits that stuck out from these books, and sometimes thinking “how can you discuss topic X if you haven’t read this book?” I aspire to write books like this about art, technology, and perception someday.

There are lots of other kinds of fiction, writing, TV and movies that changed the way I see the world, but those are much harder lists to curate, so this one is just about books. This is not a complete guide to my worldview, e.g., there are some topics for which fiction and documentary films may have shaped my worldview more than books (for example, I remember being profoundly affected by the novel A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry and the San Francisco documentary film “We Were Here.”) However, relevant to this list, the TV series Adam Ruins Everything deserves special mention for covering common misconceptions effectively across a range of topics; it’s the only TV show I’ve watched that included extensive citations.

I almost never reread books so I don’t know if some books would seem hopelessly dated now. A lot is about how the book hits you at the time you read it. Some books wouldn’t have meant anything to mean when I was too young too appreciate them, and others seem to obvious if I read them too late.

History of Science

The Age of Wonder, Richard Holmes (2008)
Rip-roaring adventure, science, and art of the romantic era, and how we came to some of our key modern ideas, including the concept of scientist (as with The Invention of Art which describes where the concept of “artist” came from). Great fun, and really fascinating for understanding where a lot of our ideas came from, from an era before we made any distinctions between “art” “science” and “philosophy.”

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn (1962)
The classic on paradigm shifts, and how “normal science” operates versus science in crisis.

“The Day The Universe Changed,” James Burke (1985)
The one TV show that I include in this list: a BBC history series that I watched as a child that I remember loving, and I do think it affected my worldview: how scientific and technological changes change how we understand the world and our worldviews. Some of the writing I do about how technology changes art might owe a debt to it. (And, being a simplified story for mass consumption, it has its problems.)

Intelligence

From Bacteria to Bach and Back, Daniel Dennett (2017)
I keep coming back to some of the ideas here, like “competence without comprehension” and the notion of “memes” (I couldn’t get through The Selfish Gene. (Longer review here.)

Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?, Frans de Waal (2016)
The author describes how scientists have consistently underestimated animal intelligence, and the many forms it takes. One tidbit that spoke to me was his assertion that, while historically “scientific” definitions of intelligence have focused on logic and reasoning, emotional intelligence is far more important to survival, and far richer and more difficult to define or understand. Social animals need emotional and social awareness more than they need language. (Longer review here.)

Don’t Shoot the Dog!, Karen Pryor (1984)
I learned a lot about postive reinforcement dog training while volunteering in an animal shelter, but I didn’t understand the philosophy and evidence behind it. This is the book that put it all together for me, how positive and negative reinforcement can be used to guide behaviors for all sorts of animals, including humans. At the same time I also enjoyed Plenty in Life is Free by Kathy Sdao (2012) a brief memoir and argument against dominance-based training even in positive reinforcement training.

Societies and Cities

The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs (1961)
The book absolutely transformed the way that I understood city life, so much that it’s hard to even remember what I thought beforehand. I felt like a cipher had been unlocked to help me understand the city in ways I never had before. I wished very much that someone had given it to me to read before I moved to New York City. I only found out about her after I moved to Toronto and went on a city walk celebrating Jane Jacobs’ activist legacy in Toronto. I became a huge Jane Jacobs fan. For more about her history as an activist in New York, along with a bit of Robert Moses’ history, I really enjoyed the short history Wrestling with Moses by Anthony Flint (2009). (Lots of people have loved and recommended The Power Broker, one that I have not started on.)

The Power of Strangers, Joe Keohane (2021)
A book about talking to strangers doesn’t sound like it would hold my attention for long, but this was a surprisingly deep exploration of the topic, through anthropology, sociology, and psychology, and many real-world experiences and practical tips. The author argues that talking to strangers is easier than we think, and an important glue in the social fabric that is in a poor state, and our country and world would be so much better if we did more of it.

Status and Culture, W. David Marx (2022)
The main thesis it that all culture, fashion, and taste arise from natural human status-seeking, and the book provides a dense analysis of the complex mechanics of both culture and status. Almost every page I was nodding as the book provided broad-strokes theoretical descriptions that perfectly matched my experience or understanding, together with a rich array of cultural examples to make it concrete.

Definitions of Art

A few years ago, I started reading a lot of books on definitions of art. Here are some of my longer reviews of those books.

The Art Instinct, Dennis Dutton (2009)
A philosopher argues that art is an evolved behavior. Includes a clear discussion of definitions of art, andwhat it takes to argue that something is an evolutionary behavior.

The Art Question, Nigel Warburton (2002)
A compact survey of 20th-century approaches to definitions of art by a philosopher. If you want to understand definitions of art, and why no simple definition works (“art is about intent”, “art is about communication”, “art is about ideas”) then this is the book to read.

The Invention of Art, Larry Shiner (2001)
How the concept of “art” was invented in the Romantic era; our modern concepts of “art” would be unrecognizable to, say, Leonardo da Vinci or the ancient Greeks. Unlike other books on this list, I found it often a bit tedious, and skimmed many chapters. but it was really worth it. It might be that the paper that inspired it is good enough (haven’t read it yet). (longer review).

Food and Health

In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan (2008)
I loved Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which compared different approaches to food production, although some aspects of the writing bothered me (like the way he anthropomorphized evolution). In In Defense of Food, he distilled his ideas and a lot of research to a basic dietary credo that affects how I eat today.

Ultra-Processed People, Chris Van Tulleken (2023)
A surveyof the theories, evidence, and the broader context for why Ultra-Processed Food is the source of so many of our dietary problems. (And, some of the original research on ultra-processed foods was inspired by Michael Pollan’s book.)

Trick or Treatment?, Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst (2008)
This book surveys the scientific method for medical knowledge, and applies it to alternative medicine. I had had a long list of confusing experiences and interactions around a variety of alternative medicine practices, and this book put it all into context. I still occasionally tell people about how pseudeoephedrine came from distilling the useful parts of ephedra (used in Chinese traditional Medicene) and discarding the toxic parts.

History

Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond (1997)
An attempt to explain why Europe and Asia colonized the rest of the world, and not the other way around, through scientific and anthropological theories rather than racist ones.

1491, Charles Mann (2005)
Most accounts of pre-Columbian indigenous life in the Americas have painted it either as either primitive savagery, or, in progressive fantasies, indigenous populations are wise and perfectly-attuned to their environments. This book provides a more accurate account of what we now know about life before 1492: dense populations and civilizations that rose and fell, just like anywhere else. A lot of our modern fantasies of pre-1492 life as being barely-populated hunter-gatherer tribes were shaped by the fact that 95-percent of the population of the Americas died from diseases brought unknowingly by European colonists, long before Europeans visited most of the affected areas. (I found the middle chapters of this book to be a bit of a slog and skimmed them.)

1493, Charles Mann (2011)
The global effects of the contact of the Americas and Europe. A fascinating account through history of post-1492 science, agriculture, and warfare. So many factoids stick in my head from this.

A Peace to End All Peace, David Fromkin (1989)
All the ins and outs of how the British and French colonialists, when carving up the Ottoman Empire at then end of World War I, created the Middle East and set the stage for seemingly-endless conflict and tyrrany.

Collapse, Jared Diamond (2005)
I only read a magazine-article version of this, not the full book, because I find it too depressing to contemplate.

Season of the Witch, David Talbot (2012)
History of San Francisco, from the 1960s to the 1980s. I find it helpful to counterbalance our current dramas with our historical dramas. The book seems a little sensational; after reading it, I asked my father if San Francisco life was as intense in the 1970s as the book portrayed it and he basically shrugged. Another local-history book I loved was The Mayor of Castro Street by Randy Shilts (1982).

Economics and inequality

Evicted, Matthew Desmond (2016)
The crushing effects of poverty, and the cruel systems that keep people poor. I also got a similar message from reading a magazine-length version of Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed many years earlier, as well as some articles accompanying the Ferguson riots in 2014, but Desmond’s is more far-reaching. I also loved Emi Nietfeld’s riveting memoir Acceptance, about childhood in foster care and homelessness.

The Myth of the Rational Market, Justin Fox (2009)
How motivated economists invented the myth of market rationality (“markets know best”) that supported the degulation disasters of the 1980s and the financial crashes and consolidations that have happened since.

Weapons of Math Destruction, Cathy O’Neal (2016)
This book was my first introduction to the harms of algorithmic decisionmaking as reinforcing inequality and racism, back in a time of optimism about machine learning. I don’t think she gets enough credit for sounding the alarm on AI, but she was writing when it wasn’t called “AI”, it was called “big data.” (Safiyah Noble’s 2018 Algorithms of Oppression discussed this in the context of Google search, again predating today’s AI hype.)

Chokepoint Capitalism, Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow (2022)
How monopolies have created precarious conditions for artists (and also why copyright alone cannot save artists). This book was written before the current AI-art controversies and provides valuable context.

Other

Non-Violent Communication, Marshall Rosenberg (2015 edition)
An invaluable approach to having more-productive and empathetic conversations, especially in the presence of conflict. (Longer blog post)

Hyperbole and a Half, Allie Brosh (2013)
Hilarious cartoon memoir that, along the way, helped me understand how absolutely debilitating clinical depression can be.

Thanks to people who recommended some of the books on this list: Moshe Vardi, Matt Hoffman, Alyosha Efros, Jitendra Malik.