Required reading....

Following is a list of books I would consider “required reading” for understanding how the world works (from my point of view). I’d like other suggestions for important books that contributed or changed one’s point of view.

Part of the impetus for some of these readings are the following quotes from Robert Heinlein:

The three-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with these three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots

And

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.

So here is the list....Not in any particular order

The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations by James Surowiecki

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell

Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond

Brave New World Revisited (Perennial Classics) by Aldous Huxley

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan

Freedom Evolves by Daniel C. Dennett

Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life by Daniel C. Dennett

The Sokal Hoax: The Sham That Shook the Academy by The Editors of Lingua Franca

The Flight from Science and Reason by Paul R. Gross

The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell

The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Mythos Books) by Joseph Campbell

Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences by John Allen Paulos

A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper by John Allen Paulos