Books That Influenced our Thinking

(By MindGame and Schastar)

Throughout life, you read books and watch presentations that deeply influence your thinking. Classic works of art and science that touch a certain note in your soul and help you understand yourself and the world better.

Today, this information is so readily available on the web that we can now link you directly to it. So here goes – our list of recommended reading and watching

Ethics, morality and Human Interaction

• William L. Ury, Roger Fisher & Bruce M. Patton: “Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In”, ISBN: 978-0395631249
• Steven Pinker: “The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature”, ISBN: 978-0142003343
  • One of the best arguments against post-modernism
• Barbara Pease & Allan Pease: “The Definitive Book of Body Language”, ISBN: 978-0553804720
  • Teach yourself to control your own body language – and read what others are not telling you
• Frederick P. Brooks: “"The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering”, ISBN: 978-0201835953
  • An enlightening memoir of how humans collaborate on large projects. And about what goes wrong when they do
  • While this is about software engineering – the lessons learned here apply to all complex projects
• Carl Sagan: “The introduction to Pale Blue Dot”, YouTube clip with a beautiful introduction to earth

Atheism

• Bertrand Russell: “Why I Am Not A Christian And Other Essays On Religion And Related Subjects”, ISBN:  978-1409727217
• Richard Dawkins: “The God Delusion”, ISBN: 978-0618918249
• Christopher Hitchens: “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything”, ISBN: 978-0446697965
  • Nothing new, but no one puts it quite like “the Hitch”

The Human Mind

• Daniel C. Dennett: “Freedom Evolves”, ISBN: 978-0142003848
• Daniel C. Dennett & Douglas R. Hofstadter: “The Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self & Soul”, ISBN: 978-0465030910
• Douglas R. Hofstadter: “Gödel, Escher, Bach – An Eternal Golden Braid”, ISBN: 978-0465026562
• Bertrand Russell: “The conquest of Happiness”, ISBN: 978-0871401625
• Steven Pinker: “How the Mind Works”, ISBN: 978-0393334777

Style and Women

• Alan Flusser: “Dressing the Man: Mastering the Art of Permanent Fashion”, ISBN: 978-0060191443
  • The only guide you will ever need to dressing yourself like a classic gentleman with style and flair ( The writing style can come across as obnoxiously snobby)
• Neil Strauss: “The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists”, ISBN: 978-0060554736
  • The introduction on how to pick up woman. And  a moral lesson on how to behave when you do
• John Bridges: “Gentlemanners Collection”, ISBN: 978-1401601232
• The essential guide to manners and proper behavior for the gentleman to be
• David Deida: “The Way of the Superior Man : A Spiritual Guide to Mastering the Challenges of Women, Work, and Sexual Desire”, ISBN: 978-1889762104

Understanding the World

• Stephen Hawking: “A Brief History of Time”, ISBN: 978-0553380163
  • One of the best descriptions of our place in the cosmos
• Richard Dawkins: “The Selfish Gene”, ISBN: 0199291152
  • A beautifully written story about how evolution works
• Richard Dawkins: “The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution”, ISBN: 978-0618619160
• A history of the species that have come before us on this planet
• Carl Sagan: “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark“, ISBN:  0345409469
  • A guide to the explorer of the world. Contains the famous baloney detection kit
• Peter L. Bernstein: “Against the Gods – the Remarkable Story of Risk”, ISBN: 0471295639
  • An easy and accessible introduction to statistics and probability theory