books you actually learned a lot from

this thread's inspired by something ian macdonald said about why he wrote "revolution in the head" — i can't find the interview anymore, but it was something along the lines of "i wanted to make the book as informative as possible, because so many books are just useless."

what books made you feel way smarter after you'd read them?

The Worldly Philosophers

I don't know if I was necessarily way smarter but it was definitely the most interesting and useful book I ever read on economics. I recommend it to everyone, even people whose eyelips droop at the word.

I read "The Millionaire Next Door" when I was 13 or so, and it shaped my philosophy on money and spending for the better. Save your money, invest and spend wisely, and don't live above your means (live below it if possible). I didn't exactly have all that much to my name, except for saved up allowance, but I still took the message to heart.

It may sound corny but The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists has shaped my thinking.

Appropriate thread considering the death of Studs Terkel, I admit to somewhat...er...limited views of American and Americans before reading Working. There are so many others though. Also The Decline and Fall of Great Powers, The Making of the English Working Class, The Pleasures of the Imagination and a whole load of criminology books, to mention a couple - Hooligan: A History of Respectable Fears and Folk Devils and Moral Panics.

lame but i'm learning a lot from 'consider the lobster' by david foster walllace. read the title essay a while ago but 'big red son' and the grammar essay are awesome.

yeah i just read "consider the lobster" and was pleasantly surprised by how informative and readable it was (i hadn't read any DFW before).

in 'big red son' he gets a little full of himself, but i've settled on dfw getting full of himself sometimes and i like it. it's still great.

x-post - oh cool! that essay was the first thing that made me think seriously about vegetarianism, as lame as that sounds.

i read it six months ago.

i read 'illusions' when i was about 15 or 16

i didn't exactly feel like i could walk through walls or anything, but i felt a lot smarter

Hannah Arendt's On Revolution
Garry Wills' Nixon Agonistes

Everything by William Gaddis and JM Coetzee - actually, they made me feel incredibly ignorant at first. But they've certainly help me learn to think. Also any book, fiction or non, that deals with history in any deep way.

The Daughter of Time taught me all about Richard III.

The aforementioned Worldly Philosophers taught me that Adam Smith was kidnapped by gypsies as a little child! (And later returned.)

The Celestine Prophesy.

HAHA had for you a second, I'm joking.

dianetics

I've learned a lot from a lot of books.

OK!

The Art of Sensual Massage

a world lit only by fire.
(cheesy best selling pop-history answer.)

Harry Thompson's novel about Fitzroy and Darwin, This Thing of Darkness.

The Da Vinci Code taught me that a literary novel can be as clever, meditative, allusive and well-written as it likes, but a pulp book with a thumping plot will always win

win what?

$

The Secrets of the Temple, by William Greider has a lot of highly interesting information about the Federal Reserve Bank, monetary policy and the banking system. It is from circa 1987, so it misses the Greenspan years, but it still can teach you a lot.

How to Be Idle

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained

Sophie's World in middle school. Several books I had to read for classes in college, particularly some On Capital, Distinction, and Culture & Equality. Moby Dick, because the more you know about whaling the smarter you are. And every time I read an ethnography I feel like I've learned a lot.

Politics and the English Language by Orwell.

Zen Keys by Thich Nhat Hanh
Dude talks Zen in such a way that this ex-philosophy student can understand.

Bedford Glossary of Critical & Literary Terms
The only glossary I've ever read for fun. It's clear & concise. Best textbook I ever bought.

The Essential Kirkegaard
Erudite & poetic.

Hip: The History by John Leland
Draws a line through a lot of stuff I like and explains what they have in common.

Will I sound like I dick if I say "Varieties of Religious Experience" by William James? Because I love that book.

I should read Moby Dick again, because being forced to read it in high school is surely not the optimal circumstance under which to fully get it.

everything i thought i learned ended up seeming like a crock, so i read jackie collins now

such truth there

Also for me, "Nicomachean Ethics"

"Nicomachean Ethics" is the Dianetics of the ancient world

Also, "Yertle the Turtle" by D. Seuss.

yall need to write what you think you learned from these books.

I've been meaning to read "Varieties of Religious Experience" sometime. Also, you should definitely reread "Moby Dick," it's fantastic but could so easily be ruined by high school class assignments.

"Varieties of Religious Experience": You are what you think. James also thinks you are lost without faith, but since he includes himself in that category, I can't accuse him of harboring resentment to the faithless.

"Nicomachean Ethics": Do what you're good at, because we all have something to give. Kind of the Dirk Diggler worldview.

"Yertle the Turtle": I know up on the top you are seeing great sights, but down at the bottom we, too, should have rights.

moby dick is righteous

I learned a lot about how horrible and fat Marie de Medici was from Huxley's "Grey Eminence".

crush of shame ^