Shepherd.com is a brand-new website where authors recommend the five best books on a topic of their choosing. The topic of my choosing was The Biggest Questions, and while I doubt very much that I picked the five best books ever written in this category (by any standard you care to name), I am at least confident that I picked five well worth your attention.
Feel free to do any or all of the following:
- Tell me (and of course our readers) what you think are the most glaring omissions from my list.
- Tell us which other lists on that site are most worth checking out.
- Tell us what topic, and what five books, you’ll be choosing if you ever get the call for a contribution from Shepherd.
Haven’t read any of your recommendations except the Smullyan book (which I enjoyed), so can’t really say my own recommendation in the category trumps the others…but the Big Question book I most enjoyed, and the one that meant the most to me, was “I Am A Strange Loop”, by Douglas Hofstadter (better known for “Godel, Escher, Back: An Eternal Golden Braid”, which seemed fun but not all that meaningful to me). The Star Trek transporter thought experiments made me realize that I believe in a soul even though I am an atheist, and that reincarnation actually makes sense…but no more sense than coincarnation (OK, I just made that word up), the thought that I am already alive in other bodies…or as much of “I” as “I” has meaning!
I’ve noticed that a lot of these great social science books of yesteryear are often more expensive than expected on Amazon. I’ve seen so many that are between $40-80. Given the quality of these books, you’d expect them to be more widely known about, in higher demand, but with more production so that the price finds its level alongside the more mainstream popular social science books that you can buy for $10-15.
… the selfish gene and the strategy of conflict would be among my “five best books”; the other three are negotiable …
Topic: practical use of probabilities and guesstimates.
Douglas W. Hubbard “How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business”
Eliezer Yudkowsky’s articles on LessWrong, also published as “Map and Territory (Rationality: From AI to Zombies)”
Both helped me a lot.
Perhaps sometimes you just want beautiful language and not so much action that you get excited: Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton