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Anyone read Ishmael by Daniel Quinn?

For an intersting philosphical treatment of hunter gatherers vs agricultural societies, see Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.

How to Win Friends and Influence People. - Dale Carnegie

Influence - Robert Cialdini

Books on understanding how to push through adversity

The Obstacle Is The Way - Ryan Holiday

Man's Search For Meaning - Victor Frankly

Books on process improvement

The Phoenix Project

The Four Hour Work Week - Tim Ferriss (ignore the outsourcing bit, listen to his podcast)

Books on breaking out of your thought bubble.

Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell

Ishmael - David Quinn

Books for understanding how sales works

Ultimate Sales Machine - Chet Holmes

Negotiate As If Your Life Depended on It - Chris Voss

Any of these books are great starts. If the leadership big bites you there's way more I can suggest. Most of these are a mix of classics and new stuff. I've read them all and they want have their own style and provide their own insight. The trick is to find out what parts work with how you do and incorporate them into your flow. The learning process never ends.

Explains an ethical viewpoint in a very clear style. Changed the way I think about human progress.

I'll also say Ishmael by Daniel Quinn and The Story of B are two of my favourite books.

The funny thing about that argument is that chimpanzees, and all other creatures, exist in some kind of hierarchy, usually involving sex and power. His premise is simply wrong.

For a more convincing argument along these lines, see Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishmael_%28novel%29?wprov=sf...

It posits that, amongst other things, agriculture (food supply) is allowing us to violate laws of nature by overextending population beyond what is sustainable. Of course, you can't violate a scientific law, so the metaphor used in the book is akin to a plane careening towards the ground and everyone claiming they took off and flew so there can be no problem now.

I think you will like it. It paints Buddhism and Stoicism in a very pragmatic light.

I second the Discworld recomendation. The series is fantastic. Read everything Pratchett has written, it is worth it.

Also: Ishmael by Daniel Quinn: the only book to truly explain the genesis scripture.

The prophet by Khalil Gibran: One of the most beautiful books I've read.

And please ignore Paulo Coelho books. Paulo Coelho is to Richard Bach what Dan Brown is to Humberto Eco.

After I read it, I felt like I could see the world for what it really is: just a bunch of fallible humans all pretending they knew The Way Things Should Be. Popes, CEOs, tech gurus, presidents, the lot of them all desperately clinging to their beliefs lest their followers abandon them.

That book made me realize that all the truths everyone "just knows" and takes for granted aren't necessarily truths. They're beliefs, or myths. Even so, there isn't anything necessarily wrong with that: a culture or civilization needs beliefs or myths to function, but what those beliefs are can determine the ultimate fate of that civilization and whether it's sustainable.

What I really took away from it is that I no longer really believe anything. Or perhaps more accurately, I recognize when something I hold true is actually a belief and not truth, and am willing to question it or understand that I continue to hold it despite any supporting evidence. I learned that beliefs are choices people make, for reasons their own.

I was always an atheist, but I realized religions are just more beliefs like any other belief people hold as true.

I learned that some beliefs can be beneficial ("If I'm good to others, others will be good to me") and others destructive ("Humans are the pinnacle of evolution"). Ideas don't need to be true to be helpful (which is why the relentless drive in tech communities, often, for the objective truth or a logical ordering and categorization for everything rubs me the wrong way).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishmael_(novel)

This book changed my life. I read this book when I was maybe 17? And read it again last year, a decade and a half later.

The most powerful lesson I learned here is what anthropologists call cultural relativism. This book also taught me that everyone is under the influence of Mother Culture and her stories. I think internalizing this can help a lot with understanding other people, building self awareness, understanding politics in general, and also history in general.

There's a narrative here about ecology and generally making the world a less shitty place which is nice too, but not the primary value-add IMO (although it's unique in proposing cultural transformation as the solution).

Nevada by Imogen Binnie was another. I read it when I was working through questions about my gender. It's dark, funny, beautiful, and brutally candid account of the (a) trans experience.

Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea series follows these closely.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishmael_(novel)

  * The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander - changed how I think about American racism from an abstract concept to reality.  Should be required reading.

  * The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho - the book I've read more than any other, a beautiful parable about finding one's place in the world.

  * Ishmael by Daniel Quinn - although it has many flaws, this book was very effective in making me question some basic assumptions about human behavior.

  * House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski - I can't exactly pin down what changed in me, but this book shook me in a way that no other book ever has.  In the right situations reading this book can be like meditation.

We are waging a war on our brothers and sisters. Our collective humanity deteriorate for each and every soul that we trample upon for the sake of economic progress.

His thoughts on religion and interpretation of religion as propaganda and how we've framed our taker society very much influenced my young mind.

- 1491 and 1493 by Charles C. Mann

The way we look at the new world and how vastly different standard teachings and what actually happened are.

- A Guide to the Good Life by William Irvine

Put to words what I already mostly practise, it identified my issues I had with buddhism.

- A Dictators Handbook by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita

An interesting flip on politics, it made me stop worrying so much about the here-and-now of it, and quelled my anger with the (further?) realisation that it is a game. If we want to fix what's happening we need to fix the rules, not the players.

I put an email address in each one, along with a quick note. I got exactly one response.

I left copies of:

Ishmael;
Another Roadside Attraction;
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintanence;
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy;
Battle Cry

(the formatting kinda sucks)

A dozen copies of each, except Ishmael which I bought the half dozen I found at a bookstore along the way and added those to my random seeding of books.

I hope they were placed in the right places and at the right times, but I only got one reply so maybe not.

"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" had a similar effect, though with the Classicist/Romanticist split more than any other part of the book. Also: "Itty-bitty rules for itty-bitty people" made quite a few things make sense.

(from Wikipedia) Ishmael is a 1992 philosophical novel by Daniel Quinn. It examines the mythological thinking at the heart of modern civilization, its effect on ethics, and how this relates to sustainability and societal collapse on the global scale.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishmael_%28novel%29