What are some books you've read that have changed your outlook

Cafe Society
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This is actually a very hard question, there have been so many that have changed my perception in someway, but these are the ones that immediately come to mind.

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, The Joke and, **The Unbearable Lightness of Being ** all by Milan Kundera. I was preparing to spend a month in the Czech Republic and I had wanted to be somewhat familiar with the country. His characters are so vivid, it is hard not to see bits of oneself in them. What was interesting was how he was perceived in the Czech Republic,at least by some of the people that I had spoken to. They felt very betrayed by him; he had not wanted to return after the revolution -and- he was writing in French (His blurbs now identify him as a Franco-Czech author)

Hidden History by Daniel Boorstin. This was the first book of his that I had read. While his points seem only common sensical when you really think about them, he presented them in a very concise way. For example, widespread literacy is a fairly recent development, so it means that whole sectors of civilization are not completely understood because there is little evidence left of them. Another point, history favours the victors. So, in reading accounts of conflicts,you need to remember that the persepective may be skewed to one side.

The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. This was the first set of books that I can remember buying. I read those books to tatters. Its been sometime since I have read them, but I can still bring to mind passages from the books.

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The Jungle - Upton Sinclair. Taught me a very healthy skepticism about commerce. Helped me understand why we have many of the laws we do, and to understand sad facts about human nature that make them necessary.

First Things First - Stephen Covey. Taught me about goal setting and time management. There are lots of books that teach these essentially common-sense concepts, but this is a good one. Good combination of practical tactics and motivation.

Authentic Happiness - Martin Seligman. He does research in the positive side of mental health. I’m not a terribly happy person, and appreciate his logic-based approach. Learn more about his ideas and take some free tests at www.authentichappiness.org

Harriet the Spy Louise Fitzhugh - read this like 20 times as a kid. Gave me my SDMB name. Not exactly sure how it changed me. It did encourage me to organize my thoughts by writing.

The 10 Lenses - Mark Williams. Great book about diversity. I really expected this to be something like “the Germans see the world this way and the Spanish see the world this way.” It turned out to be something much more interesting. It is about 10 different ways people look at diversity. For example, do you see diversity as about helping people assimilate into the main culture, about celebrating your own cultural heritage in depth, about ensuring equality or about sampling fun rituals of other cultures? This has been truly helpful to me in understanding where people are coming from when their attitudes toward diversity conflict with my own.

Lots of great books mentioned on this thread, and I will be taking notes! The opportunity to read life-changing books is one of the things that makes life worth living for me.

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Jonathan Chance said:

Wow. I could have written exactly the same thing. I grew up without a father, in a poor neighborhood, and I credit Robert Heinlein with giving me the values that allowed me to get out and make something of myself when most of my peers stayed there. He hammered home to me the value of education, of keeping your word, of being honest with yourself, of hard work and character. As a somewhat lonely young boy, Heinlein was my father figure and moral guide. I must have read every one of those juveniles at least a dozen times. Some I have read almost yearly since I was a boy, and I still have most of those dog-eared paperbacks (some replaced with new editions).

Ayn Rand had an influence on me in my later teens, but I fairly quickly came to see the flaws in her and her work. I still think it was valuable and influentional, but not the way Heinlein was.

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Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.

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This might sound kind of odd but - In A Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson. I just saw it on the shelf at the library one day and grabbed it. Before that day, I had never even given Australia a second thought. Reading that book started a kind of intellectual fire under me to learn more about Australia. Now that country fascinates me. I love everything about it and read anything I can that has to do with Australia. I’ve never been there, but I hope to live there some day.

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Carl Sagan - The Demon-Haunted World

J.R.R. Tolkien- The Lord of the Rings

Bruce Eckel- Thinking in Java

Cecil Adams- Various Writings

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It’s interesting how so many of the titles on my list have been named already. In no particular order:

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond

Hyperspace by Michio Kaku

Parliament of Whores by P.J. O’Rourke

Eat the Rich by P.J. O’Rourke

The Battle for God by Karen Armstrong

Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball by George Will

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Bennett: The Book of Virtues
Kaufmann: Faith of a Heretic
Fisher: The Gay Mystique
Gardner: Creating Minds
Jourdain: Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy
Rand: The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged
Maslow: Toward a Psychology of Being

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The Crooked Timber of Humanity, by Isaiah Berlin, is the book that finally knocked me out of the radical camp and into the liberal camp of philosophy. It elaborates on one of Macchiavelli’s central points–that there are fundamentally human value sets that are fundamentally irreconcileable (e.g., the classic Roman values of bravery, loyalty, and glory; and the classic Christian values of humility, self-sacrifice, and charity). It goes on to discuss the perils of trying to impose one set of values on everybody, asserts that utopia is impossible for humans to achieve because of these differing value sets, and concludes that the best we can do is sort of muddle our way through it, compromising all the while.

The title is based on a Goethe quote: From the crooked timber of humanity nothing straight was ever forged.

Very influential book for me.

Daniel

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Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Easily the most vital book I have ever read. I think its message can be summed up by a sentence from Nietzsche which Frankl quotes in his book: “He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.”

If you have any experience with suffering – if you are grieving, if you or a loved one has been diagnosed with a serious illness, if you are depressed, if you are smothering in a hateful job, if you’re in prison, if you’ve come face to face with humanity’s capacity for evil and no longer want to live – you should read this book.

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The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger. It’s got like a different outlook on life, which is my outlook at the moment. It’s just a different book that I really enjoy.

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I felt compelled to revive this thread for the sake of agreeing with gallows on Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. I’ve just finished reading this book (discussing it in a class of mine), and it contains some of the most profound stuff I’ve read… perhaps, ever.

Of all the psychologist folk we’ve discussed in this class (Psychological Theories of Religion), he’s the only one who seems to have his head on straight. Go Vik.

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The following books altered irrevocably my view of life:

River out of Eden - Richard Dawkins
The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee* - Jared Diamond
Guns, Germs and Steel - Jared Diamond

(*This one more than the other two, but I recommend to read them in the order shown.)

I’d like to add Straw Dogs by John Gray, that I’ve just read, but the impact of this work for me was muted by having read the other three: it was preaching to the converted, and it posed more questions than it suggested solutions. I already acknowledge that animal intelligence is a sliding scale, that we’re just animals with a self-awareness that makes us seek intellectual justification for behaviour that is largely instinctive; and that in the grand scheme of the universe, we don’t mean diddly; and yet to live well within human society one must live with personal morals that fight against instinctive behaviours. That’s not to say it wouldn’t have an effect on a non-disenthralled humanist.

I also appreciated, though don’t wholly agree with, the simple analyses of economics in Eat the Rich by PJ O’Rourke. It (together with three years living in Asia) certainly helped to dismantle some of my left-wing economic perceptions.

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Second The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan. It didn’t necessarily change my outlook, but it definitely clarified it.

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A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

I used to think that time was just a template that we placed on events, something that was not subject to debate or influence. I was wrong. The world is a much different place than what I thought it was. His knack for explaining super-complex theories in an easy to understand manner astounds me, the movie ABHOT was more confusing, and it was supposed to be a layman’s guide to the book. Idiots.

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Hmm Good Question. I’m definately making a new list of ‘must read books’.

I’d have to say a book that ‘got me to thinking’ the most was Illusions by Richard Bach (the same author that wrote Jonathan Livingston Seagull).

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Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth got me to think more seriously about religion instead of just dismissing it as tripe. It also started me on the road back to college after taking a decade off to try to be a rock star.

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Many books have changed my outlook. Among them:

Lost in the Funhouse and The Friday Book by John Barth. When I was 18 these books convinced me of the power of writing in general and of writing from one’s experience and thoughts. I don’t know if they’ve aged well, but at the time they were just what I needed.

The Necessary Angel by Wallace Stevens helped me understand poetry.

The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom helped me understand the importance of philosophy.

Being and Time by Martin Heidegger I would never have gotten through on my own, but with the help of a marvelous professor (Joseph J. Kockelmans of Penn State University) I was able to be open to philosophy.

Towards Understanding Saint Thomas by M.-D. Chenu enabled me to understand medieval Scholasticism. And, heck, who doesn’t want to understand medieval Scholasticism?

La Sagesse du Monde by Rémi Brague taught me a lot about reading old texts and understanding them responsibly. I was privileged to attend Professor Brague’s seminars, at the Sorbonne, upon which this book was based. Unfortunately I don’t think an English translation exists.

United States by Gore Vidal taught me how to be a responsible reader and reviewer, and also enabled me to understand American history and politics in a more interesting way.

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Say it isn’t so. Try reading Picture Windows: How the Suburbs Happened, by Rosalyn Baxandall and Elizabeth Ewen.

Books that have changed my outlook?

An Inquiry Into Well-Being and Destitution by Partha Dasgupta. No person has the right to call herself educated if she hasn’t read this book.

Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy. If you have a low opinion of Machiavelli and you haven’t read this book, then please kiss my ass. Machiavelli presents, inter alia,…inter many mother fuckin’ alia, possibly the best argument advocating governance by democracy or republicanism (is that a word?) as being inherently superior to a monarchy, princapality, or dictatorship that I have ever heard. If at all possible, get the two-volume edition with all the end notes. Unless you are a seriously qualified historian of ancient Rome, Greece, and Machiavelli’s Italy, the end notes will really improve the experience.

Something Or Other by Marx. I can’t remember which one it was, but it was the book I was reading when I became aware of the fact that I can tell good writing from bad, and that not being able to understand a book doesn’t mean that it is over my head. It was a very liberating experience and it remains so, and it is a valuable tool for even my meagre and simplistic attempts to live an examined life.

Lumping some together: The Day the Universe Changed by James Burke. From Dawn to Decadence by Barzun. A History of Warfare by John Keegan. Primitive Warfare by Harry Turney-High. The Pre-Industrial City by Sjoberg (sp?).

Though not books, one simply must read, back to back, What do Bosses Do?* and **What do Bosses Really Do?****. In combination, these two papers might be the most important text penned in the twentieth century. If this sort of sense was actually common, we may have avoided a hundred-million unnecessary deaths, untold suffering, and an unimaginable waste of resources.

Grouping some more together, I might offer The Norton History of the Mathematical Sciences, by Grattan-Guinness. A History of Pi by Beckman. Flatland by Abbott. Thinking Strategically by Dixit & Nalebuff. The Character of Physical Law.

Another grouping might include The Demon Haunted World, The Triumph of Evolution: And the Failure of Creationsim, Science and Creationism (Galaxy Book, Gb 721) (ed. Ashley Montagu), The Science of Discworld, and a few others that I can’t think of right now.

Lastly, I’d like to mention the works of Vonnegut, Tom Robbins, and most of all, Terry Pratchett.

*Stephen Marglin, “What Do Bosses Do?” The Review of Radical Political Economy 6 (Summer 1974): 60-112.

**D. Landes, “What Do Bosses Really Do?” Journal of Economic History 46 (September 1986): 585-623.

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Everyone Poops by Taro Gomi.

It’s my personal guide to Dung Shui.