Top Hacker News Book Recommendations in Politics & Social Sciences (all time)

All Time Past 6 Months

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

Jack Weatherford, Jonathan Davis, et al.

4.6 on Amazon

9 HN comments

The Black Book

Middleton A. Harris, Ernest Smith, et al.

4.8 on Amazon

9 HN comments

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Suzanne Toren, et al.

4.8 on Amazon

9 HN comments

Permanent Record

Edward Snowden, Holter Graham, et al.

4.8 on Amazon

9 HN comments

The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy - What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny

William Strauss and Neil Howe

4.5 on Amazon

9 HN comments

Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga

Hunter S. Thompson, Scott Sowers, et al.

4.6 on Amazon

9 HN comments

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America

Erik Larson, Scott Brick, et al.

4.4 on Amazon

8 HN comments

Black Rednecks and White Liberals

Thomas Sowell

4.8 on Amazon

7 HN comments

The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity

Douglas Murray

4.7 on Amazon

7 HN comments

The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War

Ben Macintyre

4.7 on Amazon

7 HN comments

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race

Margot Lee Shetterly, Robin Miles, et al.

4.6 on Amazon

6 HN comments

AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

Kai-Fu Lee

4.5 on Amazon

6 HN comments

The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge

Carlos Castaneda

4.7 on Amazon

6 HN comments

The Feminine Mystique

Betty Friedan, Parker Posey, et al.

4.7 on Amazon

6 HN comments

The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love

bell hooks

4.8 on Amazon

6 HN comments

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PsyoniconOct 3, 2010

If you're intending to follow this advice, don't start with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It's a great story, but doesn't really capture gonzo journalism. Gonzo, perhaps, but not journalism. Hell's Angels or Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail (1972) are much better starting points.

pvgonAug 10, 2010

It's a silly and misleading graph.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Production_Code

Alternatively watch something like Howard Hughes's Hell's Angels (1930)

mjrbrennanonDec 31, 2019

The best books I've read in the last decade (that I can remember, I've only been keeping reading lists since ~2015) are mostly important because they have contributed to my inspiration and style as a writer.

* The Road - Cormac McCarthy

* Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy

* No Country for Old Men - Cormac McCarthy

* On Writing - Stephen King

* 11/22/63 - Stephen King

* The Stand - Stephen King

* Hell's Angels - Hunter S. Thompson

* East of Eden - John Steinbeck

* Slouching Towards Bethlehem - Joan Didion

* In Cold Blood - Truman Capote

abakkeronJune 9, 2017

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_and_Loathing_in_Las_Vegas...

That passage remains one of the most meaningful things I've read in my life.

However, his defining work in my opinion is Hell's Angels. It is prescient in so many ways. Among the most interesting is how early he is able to see, inside the Hell's Angels motorcycle gang, the rise of so many later developments in US politics. I will not ruin the surprise, but some of the passages would make you swear that the man had a time machine. I've read it 3 times now.

DanHultononOct 6, 2010

I bought the Kindle app for my iPhone and now it's pretty much the only way I read.

Saving $2 for each new fiction "softcover" I want to buy? Fantastic.

Saving $5 for each new fiction "hardcover" I want to buy? Incredible.

Saving $15 off Coders At Work? Seriously? AWESOME.

Having my entire book collection with me everywhere, and being able to add to it at a moment's notice regardless of where I am or if I've vaguely close to a bookstore? So convenient, it makes paper books wince.

Seriously, there'e relatively few downsides. Comic books don't display well on my tiny phone screen, so I'm not there yet. And not all books are available yet in ebook form (Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson wasn't, but Fear and Loathing WAS.).

But realistically, eBooks, e-readers, and the various apps that emulate them ROCK solid.

bcbrownonDec 22, 2016

Language in Thought and Action, S.I. Hayakawa

How to Read a Book, Mortimer J. Adler

Gilgamesh

Beowulf

Snowcrash

High Output Management, Andy Grove

Hell's Angels by Hunter S Thompson

Programming Pearls, Jon Bentley

Walden, Thoreau

Autobiography of Red, Anne Carson

Letters from a Stoic, Seneca

Three Body Problem, Cixin Liu

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein

Tyranny of Words, Stuart Chase

Golden Mean, Annabel Lyon

Disrupted, Dan Lyons

Big Data, Nathan Marz

Practical OO Design in Ruby, Sandi Metz

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus, Rainier Maria Rilke

Anatomy of a City, Kate Ascher

Language and Thought by Chomsky

Hero of a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell

Language and Responsibility by Chomsky

Magic, Science, Religion by Malinowski

Meditiations by Marcus Aurelius

Oranges by John McPhee

The Dream of the Enlightement, Anthony Gottlieb

Nonexistant Knight/Cloven Viscount, two novellas by Calvino Italo

Deltoid Pumpkin Seed by John McPhee

Infrastructure by Brian Haynes

I'd recommend almost all of them, but especially the first two, and Autobiography of Red(poetry).

simonebrunozzionDec 9, 2020

For the ones (like me) who didn't grow up in the US and/or didn't study in US schools, it might be useful to get a quick sense of who Hunter S. Thompson, the author of the letter, was (from wikipedia [0]):

Hunter Stockton Thompson (July 18, 1937 – February 20, 2005) was an American journalist and author, and the founder of the gonzo journalism movement. He first rose to prominence with the publication of Hell's Angels (1967), a book for which he spent a year living and riding with the Hells Angels motorcycle club to write a first-hand account of the lives and experiences of its members.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_S._Thompson

52-6F-62onJune 9, 2017

Hell's Angels is a landmark in investigative writing -- it's one of my favourites as well. It's sobering and eye-opening. The only other groups with knowledge of their workings that he acquired are in the IC, or the police (at least at the time).

I lent my copy to a friend a few years ago and never saw it back. That reminds me...

yes_or_gnomeonJune 15, 2015

Having spent a lot of my youth in Louisville, I admire both men. For those that don't know, both Hunter and Ali come from Louisville. Both men had troubled youth, but that's about where the similarities end.

Hunter was forced into the military to avoid jail time and, after that, went to Columbia (TIL, apparently, he only audited classes), and to write Hell's Angels, etc.

Ali (Cassius Clay) was several years younger than Hunter, and grew up half a city away (https://goo.gl/maps/f76SJ). But, under similar, difficult circumstances. Found boxing at 12yo because he wanted to beat up a kid for stealing his bike.

I know that Hunter S. Thompson was a big fan of boxing (and football), and that he had stated Ali as a hero of his. But, I feel that it's sad and unfortunate to read something like this. It seems that Hunter spent a lot of his middle years floating in a pool. It really wasn't until they made the movie Fear and Loathing that he had a resurgence.

I can only look backwards through documentaries and commentary, but I find it quite surprising that the two only met once for an interview. Hunter was embarrassed that Ali didn't know who he was; http://bloguin.com/queensberryrules/2014-articles/when-hunte.... It just seems odd that these two people that were hugely influential (Ali more-so) during the 60s and 70s for civil rights and similar political beliefs, that they never actually met one another.

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