This is one I came to say. I read it when I was a kid and it made me better able to see things from another person’s point of view. I can’t say it ever resulted in my making friends but I do have the power to influence people. 
Another book that changed me was Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. After reading it, I read a lot more books about food production and stopped eating meat for a couple of years.
The feminist of the 1920s (my great grandmother’s generation) and the 1940s (my grandmother’s generation) fought for the right of women to have an education, a job, and life beyond cooking and diapering babies. It was the housewives of the 1950s and 1960s that tried to push back that progress and return us all to what Friedan accurately described as the “comfortable concentration camp” of home and baby worship.
It isn’t a single book but when I was a kid I had like two dozen of the How and Why Wonder books in a variety of subjects (mostly the biology and Natural science topics vs. the History ones). They were books written for kids in the form of questions and answers and I loved them. I read and reread them so many times and would get new ones for holidays and birthdays. They completely formed my love of reading and science, helped me in school and basically helped form my personalty as kind of a nerd. I can’t really overstate their influence on me even as an adult decades later.
I read the Bible. It helped me become an atheist.
The Hobbit. I read it in grade school and it developed my love of books
I see where you’re coming from. Post WWII women did not want to return to traditional roles but society created a new role for women that focused solely on that role as housewife and mother, even for women with an education. I don’t see that role as entirely created by women, there was compromise based on the idea of returning to a traditional period following the Great Depression and the war, but it was mostly a return to the white male dominated society, and not surprisingly, guess who held all the power at the time.
It always comes back to Huckleberry Finn for me. As a young teenager it took me a while before I had the patience to read it all the way through and grasp the entirety of the story. I just don’t recall books that paint a picture of humanity in that way. I suppose I’ve learned more about some matters from other books, and been entertained by others, but I can’t think of anything that really taught me much about human nature and the enduring struggle to make sense of it than that book.
I guess we’re talking about personal influence on us, not overall influence, right? Because the Bible has been a lot more influential overall than any of the many others mentioned in this thread.
But if we’re talking personal influence, I think I have to say it was A Wrinkle in Time, which shaped my career preferences for the rest of my life. I’ve said I wanted to be “a scientist” since I was about three years old, but it was when I read AWiT that I settled in on relativity.
Well, of course. The Bible is probably the single strongest shaping work in Western Civilization, the linchpin of the history of knowledge and the rock on which whole nations were built. And that’s all religious considerations aside.
So yeah, personal influence as in “what book by itself shaped you the most” - and probably excluding universal things like the Bible and encyclopedias and whatnot.
ETA: Make it “What book had the most effect on making you uniquely you”?
The Feminine Mystique does a very good job of illustrating this by showing how women’s magazines went from being envoys to the world beyond the home to being fences to keep women bound to babies and housework. It’s really fascinating to look at women’s magazines before the 1950’s and see how much they discussed economics, politics, and culture. My favorites are some of the Victorian era magazines marketed to wealthy women. Almost all of the child-raising articles in them that start with “This is what you tell the nanny and/or governess to do. . . . .”
1984 - George Orwell
It taught me to view all media, business, politics, authority, etc with a measured skeptical eye, and helped separate the altruistic influences from the self-serving in my life.
-The Bible
-A Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger
-*A Clockwork Orange[/I[ - Anthony Burgess
A fairly eclectic mix, I think.
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This is a warning for being a jerk. This post is uncalled for. Don’t make posts like this.
It was pointed out to me that this sounds like a threat to the poster. And it does - I should have added a word that made it clear I meant ZPG Zealot, by name and from many posts elsewhere, has chosen not to have children and thus “opted out of the gene pool.” If I said the above at all, it should have read “…you have *made *the choice…”
Apologies to** ZPG** and anyone else who found the comment… inappropriate.
This will probably come as no surprise to anyone here, but the Communist Manifesto. It pretty much set the pathway for the rest of my life so far, regardless of where I’ve ended up and what I’ve ended up doing.
In the specifics of Communism, or in the more general sense that there was an alternative way to look at social/political systems?
I’m torn between the Lord of the Rings and Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books.
LoTR was undoubtedly a massive influence on me, due to being brought up by a Tolkien fanatic (I was familiar with the BBC radio adaptation even before I could read); it’s the only book I normally have two copies of, one to read and one to pass on, but I suspect the amout of my personality, views on life and sense of humour that can be directly attributed to Terry Pratchett is rather higher.
I don’t remember when I read my first Pratchett, but I think I would have been 10 or 11.
Table Tennis for Dummies
Actually, I still recommend Carl Shipman’s 1974 photography book Understanding Photography
It’s not life changing by any means, but it’s a great read and workbook for anyone wanting a well rounded understanding of the basics of the photographic process. Still valuable knowledge even in this digital age for becoming a better photographer. (imho, ymmv as usual on the SDMB) If one really understands what’s actually happening, they should be better able to control it.
Free pdf downloads are available at sites on the first page of my google search for it.
otherwise, I guess the book of Obadiah. He was a nipper of figs, you see…
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Writing with Style: Conversations on the Art of Writing, by John Trimble. I can’t recommend it enough.
Not a book, but by far the most influential thing I’ve read in recent memory: The essay “Notes on Nationism” by George Orwell.