The Encyclopedia of Country Living by Carla Emery. Over 800 pages, this came out in the 70’s. If you want to buy land and start yourself a farm, it covers that. And how to raise rabbits, slaughter and cut up a pig, raise/cook/preserve every possible fruit and vegetable, make your own pasta, milk a cow, bake bread, preserve eggs in a barrel over the winter, make butter and cheese, shoe a horse, maintain a compost heap…and much much more.
Decision Points by George W. Bush.
Tales of H.P. Lovecraft.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.
The Victory of Reason by Rodney Stark.
My Life as a 10-Year Old Boy by Nancy Cartwright.
There you have it. Fiction. Non-fiction. Fantasy. Biography. History. Not necessarily in that order.
W. Edwards Deming. I recommend him highly.
Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink
(reviews from Amazon)
Tom Vanderbilt: TRAFFIC. it’s about driving.
In no particular order:
Literary Theory: An Introduction - Terry Eagleton
Art: A New History - Paul Johnson
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid - Douglas R. Hofstadter
Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud - Peter Watson
The Complete Monty Python’s Flying Circus; All the Words Volume One - Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam , Terry Jones, John Cleese, Michael Palin
Writing with Style: Conversations on the Art of Writing, by John R. Trimble. The thing about good writing is that its backbone is good, logical thinking. Learn to organize your thoughts enough to write well, and I guarantee you’ll have a more orderly brain.
Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
It will lead you into researching all sorts of things.
I just finished Here’s Looking at Euclid, by Alex Bellos, which is a good introduction to some of the more interesting parts of math.
Regards,
Shodan
well in that case, i would like to nominate tvtropes.org
I’d one-up you with actually recommending the Dictionary of Cultural Literacy. Ignore the awful cover, this is the best large bathroom tome that I keep next to the toilet for quick reading and lots and lots of learning. Every doper should have a copy.
I’ve never heard of this book - ordered. Looks interesting. I had not heard of **An Incomplete Education **until a few years ago either - good stuff.
A great book that I don’t think has been mentioned: The Discoverers by Daniel J. Boorstin.
- Holy Bible
- Looking Out for Number One, by Robert Ringer
- Morning of the Magicians, by Lewis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier.
- Either *Burr *or *Lincoln *by Gore Vidal.
Ok, but we can all skip Leviticus, right?
I wouldn’t claim to know what books make you smarter, but I for one found Doubt: A History by Jennifer Michael Hecht to be utterly informative and fascinating.
Plenty of reading to keep me going there I think, thanks all.
If you want to learn about human nature and the rules of culture and war, and about God and greed and success and failure, read “Gone With the Wind” (but skip the movie).
Then read Alex Hailey’s “Roots” and try to get your brain wrapped around man’s inhumanity (plus purge the racist imagery from GWTW).
Then try Stephen Jay Gould’s “Mismeasure of Man”. With any luck you’ll love his writing and find him an entertaining guide through various biological sciences.
Carl Sagan is a similar writer, his “Dragons of Eden” is fascinating and accessible. If you get nothing more than “correlation does not equal causation” from it, you’ll still be ahead of most journalists.
But the one you really ought to read, above and beyond the others, is “Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior.” Because if you can interact with a wide range of people in a civilized, constructive way, you’ll have a million learning opportunities. And absent good manners you’re going to have a hard time with life no matter how “smart” you are.