/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.3835119]

What are some essential non-fiction books that teach something crucial about the world and the history of mankind? Books that are universally recognized and books that you think anyone who wants to understand the world properly (how societies and people work) should read.

The Wealth of Nations, The Republic, The Art of War, Das Kapital. These are examples of the kind of books I'm looking for. The link in the sticky wasn't much help.

[Anonymous No.3835281]

bump

[Anonymous No.3835285]

Such a list is inexhaustible, but here are a few suggestions:

- Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan.
- Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government.
- Mill, John Stuart. Utilitarianism, On Liberty.
- Montesquieu, Charles de. The Spirit of the Laws.
- Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morality.
- Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Émile, or On Education.
- Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Of the Social Contract.

[Anonymous No.3835288]

>>3835119
Dadaist Manifesto
The Decline of The West
The Interpretation of Dreams

[Anonymous No.3835303]

>>3835119

[Anonymous No.3836231]

>>3835285
>>3835303

Thanks for the recommendations guys. bumping for more ideas

[Anonymous No.3836236]

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
The Story of Civilization
The March of Folly

[Anonymous No.3836260]

OP I like you. I've been doing the same project and would have listed THE SAME books you did as a starting point!

Also don't forget

Charles Darwin. The Origin of Species.

[Anonymous No.3836274]

>>3836236
I'm starting to think people that recommend Decline and Fall of Roman Empire never read the book. You get less about Roma than wikipedia.

[Anonymous No.3836286]

>>3836274
I've never finished the whole thing but I own the 8-volume series and I'm on #3 (The Revival and Collapse of Paganism) right now. There's plenty of Rome. If you're talking about the city of Rome, it's pretty much not covered at all past its fall in the fourth volume.
Unless you read the -snort- ABRIDGED edition!

[Anonymous No.3836305]

Would your recommend the abridged version for someone who doesn't have the time to read all the volumes?

[Anonymous No.3836328]

The selfish meme - Kate something

[Anonymous No.3836337]

>>3836286
Got both sets of these a year ago for $20 and haven't even touched them, but they sure do look nice on my shelf.

[Anonymous No.3836339]

>>3836274
For me the problem isn't so much coverage as accuracy. Historical study has moved on since Gibbon- if you want to actually learn about the history of Rome, surely something written in the last couple of decades would be a better bet?

[Anonymous No.3836346]

Spengler - decline of the west
Tonybee - a study of history

[Anonymous No.3836347]

>>3836339
Primary sources, anon. Livy, Julius Cesar, Dyonisus, Historia...

[Anonymous No.3836352]

>>3835288
>>3836346

What should I read before decline of the west to get the most out of it?

His idea of a cyclical framework of history is really sticking with me.

[Anonymous No.3836356]

>>3836346
Both too old to be accurate.

[Anonymous No.3836359]

>navigating power relationships
in addition to the art of war read the prince--however the 48 laws of power is an easier read and covers most of it while still being colourful

>understanding roots of behavior (perception, sexual attraction, etc.)
some evolutionary psychology would probably help. i'd suggest pinker--how the mind works, blank slate, or the better angels of our nature. maybe wright's intro to ev psy if you just want the facts without the flourish

>>3836260
listen to this dude

>>3836328
dawkins' selfish gene was a seminal book at the time. however unless you want to pry into the cool biological theory about evolutionary stable systems (which you should totally do), the main argument (that the gene is the level of inheritance, rather than the individual or the species) is pretty much common knowledge nowadays and you can probably do without. this isn't to say dawkins isn't a brilliant biologist... something much overlooked due to his (in my opinion, asinine) preoccupation with humiliating religious zealots (what on earth could be less intellectually stimulating)

>>3835285
skip rousseau, he's a hack. replace both those books with isaiah berlin's two concepts of liberty (a relatively short essay) and you'll be better off. otherwise locke and hobbes should do you right for basic social contract theory.

>>3835288
do not waste your time on any of these unless you are vying to be a blabbering sycophant rather than a learned man. some freud is ok (civ & its discontents) but not his dream shit

>>3836236
gibbons is great but very dense. i've heard researchers name drop him as the benchmark they use for assessing a graduate reading level ("grade 16")

i'm very interested in theories of power as exercised at a cognitive and social level (majored in biology and political theory haha) so if you want future recommendations (beginner moral theory, legal theory, game theory, sociology of religion, etc.) just holla at chyer bro

[Anonymous No.3836360]

>>3836352
A classical history covering Greece and Rome.

Some Goethe and Nietzsche wouldn't hurt either.

[Anonymous No.3836361]

The Peoples History of the World - Chris Harman

The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class - Guy Standing

The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State - Friedrich Engels


And pretty much all the works of Karl Marx. Yes people say Marxism is out of date, but they are full of fucking shit. Marx's writings are amongst the most eye opening stuff out there.

[Anonymous No.3836365]

>>3836352
http://muslimphilosophy.com/ik/Muqaddimah/Table_of_Contents.htm

Plato's Republic

Know history reasonably well

[Anonymous No.3836366]

>>3836359
The selfish meme is about the inheritance of culture. The authors name is Kate, I can't think of her last name. It's a very interesting and eye opening book.

[Anonymous No.3836367]

>>3836361
Marxist sociology = good
Marxist economics = bad
Marxist critical theory = grab bag

[Anonymous No.3836369]

>>3836367
What's wrong with Marxist economics?

[Anonymous No.3836372]

>>3836366
Dawkins originated the term meme so I'm guessing it's just a hackish spinoff. Btw, did you know that culture and genes co-evolve? As we began domesticating cows, we incidentally encouraged a proliferation of genes that can digest milk :-)

[Anonymous No.3836374]

>>3836369
Not him, but Marx didn't really go that deep into a new economics system, Das Kapital Vol.4 was never properly released.

Marx also didn't see the uprising of Social democracy, which pretty much put a big stick in the cogs of the processes he thought the future would go through.

To me his critique of capitalism is very spot on though. Rothbard and Mises's "debunking" of them were totally fucking hilariously bad.

[Anonymous No.3836378]

>>3836359
I like this guy.

[Anonymous No.3836420]

>>3836359

Why is Rousseau a hack?

[Anonymous No.3836421]

>>3836359

What would be the best way to introduce oneself to game theory?

[Anonymous No.3836441]

>>3835119

[Anonymous No.3836443]

>>3835119
also, this

[Anonymous No.3836488]

>>3836441
>>3836443

go away shitbird

[Anonymous No.3836522]

>>3836488
nice argument, faggot

[Anonymous No.3837277]

>>3836420
well i can't speak for him but I think rousseau is wrong because he thought we were born pure and society corrupts us, but i see it as mostly the other way around


evolution gives us the drive to rape and murder and it's the social compact that makes us value things like preserving society and utilitarianism more


there is a lot of suffering in nature, which seems to be an inherent process of it and evolution, but rape and murder is more of a "common" process in human societies, but not necessary

[Anonymous No.3837292]

>>3837277
>evolution gives us the drive
>inherent process of it and evolution
all this fedora on my /lit/
goddamit

[Anonymous No.3837305]

>>3837292
i don't see the link but i'm sure you have an explanation that will give me a spiritual awakening and the ability to truly channel my inner neckbeard chakra

[Anonymous No.3837341]

>>3835119
The Great Transformation by Karl Polanyi

The most seminal book on industrialization and economics I've read.

>>3836367
None political Marx is fucking top-notch. Communist Manifesto pretty bad, but Das Kapital was accurate. The overproduction of industries, the need to disperse capital and so-on were all predictively accurate.

He wrote as a direct reply and uses the theories of Ricardo, Smith and etc. He only took them to their logical conclusions.

[Anonymous No.3837367]

>>3837277

Did you think those cartoons where the caveman clubs a woman with a stick and takes her back to his cave were accurate?

Read a fucking book you mong.

[Anonymous No.3837383]

>>3836359
>pinker--how the mind works, blank slate
fucking lol; a archetypical /sci/duck that satisfies his anti-intellect with mainstream literature

ignore everything this pop-psych gobbler mentions/recommends

regarding the mind, if anything, read fodor instead; and get familiar with philosophy asap --unless you want to end up like the guy i'm shitting on--preaching hacks and pseudo-intellectuals that no serious academic reads and pays attention to.

[Anonymous No.3837387]

>>3837367
have you read the studies of jane goodall? she worked with chimpanzees i believe and she saw some fucked up shit

[Anonymous No.3837456]

>>3837387

Bonobos are just as close to humans as chimps. Why didn't you use them as an example?

[Anonymous No.3837488]

>>3837456
4 out of the 5 great apes act like that, but i'm fairly certain goodall only worked with chimpanzees


it's pretty easy to look up her studies because of the fame involved

[Anonymous No.3837497]

>>3835285
Seconding Hobbes. Then Rousseau so you can quit Hobbes.

[Anonymous No.3837515]

>>3837488

Her studies would tell me nothing about the homo genus and how it has developed.

[Reasoner !qR/x.62rVM No.3837529]

Five years on the internet arguing with stupid people and thus reading snippets of relevant information in order to contradict them will endow you with practically every logically ascendant methodology and historically important context for each.

[Anonymous No.3837539]

>>3837529

I know this post was in jest, but I seriously feel like a doofus when, after arguing for 5-6 years on the internet, I feel like I know fuck all about anything significant, especially the things I argue about.

[Reasoner !qR/x.62rVM No.3837548]

>>3837456
Because chimps are socially much closer to humans than bonobo's. Chimps are patriarchal and bonobo's are, as close as its possible to describe, matriarchal. As the females control the males with sex. Bonobo's have a society structured entirely around sex and pleasure, chimpanzees have social structures that are founded by violence and sexual oppression.

So you can see why it would be a better analogue for human society.

>>3837539
It was in jest but in seriousness the medium through which the internet expresses argument is one of the few in the world that is truly devoid of both shame and pride. Meaning an argument is as you make it; hence there is such a large gap between intelligent people and bat shit insane/retarded people on places like 4chan. There's really no middle ground.

But i feel where you're coming from. You should know though that reading entire books is pretty inefficient. If you had the books main points placed in front of you and its set of morals it conveys in each chapter, that would be much more efficient? Right? Well that's what you've been doing, arguing.

[Anonymous No.3837553]

>>3837539
>I feel like I know fuck all about anything significant, especially the things I argue about.

Glad to have you.

[Anonymous No.3837594]

>>3837548

>So you can see why it would be a better analogue for human society.

No I don't. Human societies aren't founded on violence or 'sexual oppression'. Neither are they founded on sex and pleasure. Humans occupy the middle ground. The social structure of Homo sapiens was for a long time best described as egalitarian. Civilization made the whole shebang a million times more complicated but if we're talking about evolutionary adaptations that is irrelevant.

[Reasoner !qR/x.62rVM No.3837618]

>>3837594
Humans are extremely close analogues to chimpanzee societies. If you don't agree then you go argue your case with every major anthropologist and chimp expert in the entirety of the universe.

>Human societies aren't founded on violence or 'sexual oppression'
HAW HAW HAW HAW AHW

[Anonymous No.3837636]

>>3837618

>If you don't agree then you go argue your case with every major anthropologist

But any anthropologist agrees that paleolithic humans were largely egalitarian. There was violence against neighboring tribes for sure, but that's not to say the society itself was founded on violence.

[Reasoner !qR/x.62rVM No.3837649]

>>3837636
That's just not true. Patriarchal societies use violence and blood lines to establish leadership. And considering royalty hasn't existed for the majority of human history, and even when it did violence was used to enforce that rule of law, you're wrong on both accounts and im leaving this conversation because you're probably very uneducated.

[Anonymous No.3837657]

>>3837636
>But any anthropologist agrees that paleolithic humans were largely egalitarian
except that that would be an appeal to authority on your part; and the case itself, whether paleolithic humans were largely egalitarian or not, is highly speculative and empirically unverifiable that it is meaningless and not worth mentioning

[Anonymous No.3837666]

>>3837649

>Patriarchal societies use violence and blood lines to establish leadership.

That's cool and all but there's no evidence prehistoric homo sapiens worked that way.

[Anonymous No.3837675]

>>3837649
you scholastic copy-pastas of wikipedia are empirically unverifiable as well

sit the fuck down, self-proclaimed educated fellow

[Anonymous No.3837679]

>>3837675
your*

[Anonymous No.3837694]

>>3837657
>>3837675

Studying isolated hunter-gatherer tribes that still exist today can give us somewhat reliable information about prehistoric societies. If they've been truly isolated there's little chance their model of society has changed significantly in the past 6000 years.

[Anonymous No.3837707]

>>3837594
It depends on the scope and perspective of the question. Are we inspecting the microscope inequalities that can pile up in a matter of moments between two persons discussing an innocuous subject in the way in which one establishes a superiority in some way while the other tries to dominate in another, or the way that within every household power is typically distributed in an unequal manner, even in the most innocous ways, how some do less chores or make more decisions that affect the others. If one looks at things on that domestic and interpersonal level, equality has never existed in human relationships, from the babe that sucks at its mother's tit to the old man who must be helped into and out of chairs. Egalitarian in the formal (artificially constructed and conventional sense) of a body of rules, a code, laws, political organisation: that is preposterous too. From the dawn of "law" there have been "lawmakers" who made the laws, and law is simply a more developed form of "violence", which exerted itself less formally through individual leaders and groups before the "lawmakers" in a more dynamic and less organised fashion, perhaps more arbitrarily than the lawmakers, but in the beginning they legislated mostly in their own interests until the time of someone like Solon.

[Anonymous No.3837710]

>>3837548
>Because chimps are socially much closer to humans than bonobo's.

Not all anthropologists agree with this. Some say that bonobos may be closest to us. Either way, I think looking at primitive societies is probably a better bet than looking at non-human primates. However, it's still somewhat limited because societies are often the product of the human's environment and the very fact that they live in an environment unique enough that it has allowed them to be isolated for so long may also have caused their society to evolve into something significantly different than that of our ancestors

[Reasoner !qR/x.62rVM No.3837719]

>>3837710
Genetically they are closest to us. But socially we are closest to chimps.

>I think looking at primitive societies is probably a better bet than looking at non-human primates.
Anyone who has ever read the islam holy book will know that what i say is true.

[Anonymous No.3837736]

>>3837719

>Anyone who has ever read the islam holy book will know that what i say is true.

How can you possibly think such a thing has any significance to what we're talking about?

[Reasoner !qR/x.62rVM No.3837749]

>>3837736
>How could you POSSIBLY think that the very unchanging foundation of an entire CULTURE was at all relevant to the discussion of the FOUNDATIONS of CULTURES?! ARE YOU INSANE?

And then the conversation ended.

[Anonymous No.3837752]

>>3837719
>what i say is true.
shitlisted, filtered, etc.

[Anonymous No.3837758]

Egalitarian political systems have really properly speaking never existed unless one believes that the kibbutz were equal in the formal sense political sense which is self-deluding: our egalitarian politics are equal because we say they are equal. In reality the procedures which every egalitarian political system employs are bureaucratic and all bureaucratic processes to date have been aristocratic (and/or meritocratic) and anti-egalitarian. With computing it may now be possible to establish a more egalitarian procedure for politics but that still leaves a tremendous inequality between those who make the computers and those who don't.

Prehistoric societies may be "empirically" unsalvageable but I think one can study their character with a basic thought experiment: how would people act in the event of the zombie apocalypse.

[Anonymous No.3837799]

>>3837749

How does what some post-agricultural culture was founded upon tell us anything about how the Homo genus developed?

Why do you keep talking about the past few thousand years when we've already established all that is irrelevant in the evolutionary scale?

[Reasoner !qR/x.62rVM No.3837804]

>>3837799

[Anonymous No.3837810]

>>3837758

>one can study their character with a basic thought experiment: how would people act in the event of the zombie apocalypse.

That is completely retarded. How people would act depends on what kind of society they grew up in. No one alive today (apart from a few thousand people in jungles somewhere) has been brought up in a prehistoric society.

[Anonymous No.3837813]

War in the Age of Intelligent Machines and A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History by Manuel DeLanda

Propaganda by Jacques Ellul

[Anonymous No.3837816]

>>3837804

I didn't expect your posts to get this bad.

[Reasoner !qR/x.62rVM No.3837825]

>>3837816
Neither did your mother.

[Anonymous No.3837836]

>>3837825

>>>/pol/

[Anonymous No.3837845]

>>3837813

Thanks for the recommendations, they sound interesting albeit a bit intimidating. Do I need to understand game theory and/or complex systems before tackling those De Landa books?

[Anonymous No.3837847]

>>3836369

One problem is that he didn't foresee how technology would develop. Neither did anyone else, of course, but Marx observed a number of negative trends in contemporary industrial economies (particularly in the UK, and particularly in relation to the slowdown in industrial employment) and made assumptions based on those observations, only for them to be ostensibly nullified after his death by the rise of electricity, assembly lines and so on.

That being said, after another 130 years we seem to be hitting the same buffers that he wrote about when analysing the downturn at the end of the first industrial revolution, and it's hard to imagine a development that will boost employment in industry today.

[Anonymous No.3837848]

The Bible

[Anonymous No.3837861]

>>3837836
y u mad tho?

[Anonymous No.3837866]

>>3837845

Just wiki shit

[Anonymous No.3837890]

>>3836274
No one reads it nowadays for accuracy. The writing is stupendous, it offers an 18th c. rebuttal to the rise of Christianity and its place in societies, etc. -all those are reasons for reading it in the modern age.

[Anonymous No.3837896]

>>3837816
"That's a bit weird, isn't it?"

[Anonymous No.3837951]

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond was pretty good. It's very dense, though, so it can be a bit tiring to read.


I once read a criticism of the book which claimed it was "too deterministic." To this day, I don't understand how what is essentially a history book being deterministic is bad.


For Physics, the Feynman Lectures on Physics is a classic.

[Anonymous No.3837973]

>replying to tripshits
will you retards ever learn

[Anonymous No.3837995]

>hurr hurr over production (but high prices are exploitation mkay)


fucking marxists, if something is producing, it is necessarily increasing demand elsewhere (where are they getting stuff to do stuff?). overproduction of *everything* then by definition would no longer be overproduction, a recession or 'breakdown of de capitolist structure' could not follow from this.

but what could cause something to *look like* everyone is buying less of everything? well its simple, theres yet one commodity you are ignoring in this analysis, MONEY. when entities value accrual of script over its use, demand goes down, which in turn reduces supply, which in turn is reducing demand for other things ect (or in other words, things arnt purchased, scaling down happens, even less entities can purchase now).

of course, money in the bank does not lead to this, far from it infact, banks use your deposits to lend to other entities, driving growth (or spinning the wheels of the financial market in incestuous relationships, but i digress). how recessions happened does very much involve banks though, and what usually happened is one day podunk consolidated has a bank run, and all the other banks suddenly want to increase their real reserves inorder to survive possible runs on themselves, but naturally there simply isint enough money to go around, so economic activity grinds to a halt when lending stops (unless of course you create more money until it stops being so valuable a commodity, but thats another can of worms).

[Anonymous No.3838005]

>>3837995

>Nobody here has read DeLanda


Fucking correlationistfags

[Anonymous No.3838026]

>>3837951

When they say that they're arguing against the idea that Europe and Asian societies becoming dominant in the world was inevitable due to their geographical location/environment.

[Anonymous No.3838058]

>>3838026
I'm not sure that bides with "too deterministic"; that seems to go along with the luck factor.

[Anonymous No.3838060]

>>3837951


by good you mean good at presenting misinformation as factual and non-sequiturs as logically following right?

[Anonymous No.3838107]

>>3837861

Not so much mad as condescendingly pitying.

[Anonymous No.3838384]

Richard Dolan - AD After Disclosure

it's a well thought-out scenario of how an alien contact will change our world in the first few years

[Anonymous No.3838411]

>>3838384

>>>/x/

[Anonymous No.3838455]

Most crucial thing, (lets say for me at least) is to understand the reasons why you think as you do of the world and how other see the world and how that perception changes depending on culture, language, moral conceptions etc. This is what you should aim for as a thinker; meaning to distantiate yourself from your humanity (all too human) and to recognize the fictions (superstitions) and deep rooted conventions that are underlines in the ways you communicate, and thinking. Anyway read Foucault. :)

[Anonymous No.3838482]

The most important books (excluding those you listed) in the history of the world are arguably:

The Bible
The Illiad & Oddysey
The Divine Comedy
Metamorphoses by Ovid

These books have had an amazing cultural impact, shaping the way society is right now from a cultural-literary-fiction standpoint. Philosophy and politics/economy:

Plato's Republic
Descartes - Meditations
John Stuart Mill - On Liberty
Thomas Hobbes - Leviathan
Kant's Critiques (and the reading necessary to understand Kant)
Thomas Moore - Utopia
Montesquieu - L'Esprit des Lois (don't know English title sorry)
Machiavelli - The Prince
Marx - Das Kapital
Adam Smith - Wealth of Nations
Charles Darwin - On The Origin of Species
Freud - The Ego and the Id (anything by Freud really)
Wittgenstein - Tractatus & Investigations

[Anonymous No.3838506]

>>3838482
Oh, you could also add Grimm's Fairy Tales and Don Quixote to the first list.

[Anonymous No.3838508]

All this Western canon is disgusting. You know civilization didn't start in Greece right?

[Anonymous No.3838517]

>>3838508
ah, why, yes, because we're still waiting for civilisation to start, monsieur.

[Anonymous No.3838541]

>>3838508

Recommend some of that essential non-Western stuff then. Contribute.

[Anonymous No.3838545]

>>3838541
Contribute? What is this, internet message board communism? Did you never hear that line: from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs? A lot better than "CONTRIBUTE BRO"

[Anonymous No.3838552]

>>3838545

Have you always been such a smug cunt?

[Anonymous No.3838558]

>>3838552
you imagine i'm smug but you have no idea how i express myself except these mute signs you are reading through your own voice, wherein lies the rewt of the smugness.

[Anonymous No.3838586]

>>3838558
they're not so mute as you think

[Anonymous No.3838599]

>>3838482
Why is Ovid recommended while Heisod is always ignores?

[Anonymous No.3838602]

the fact that you consider 'the wealth of nations' valuable philosophy makes me believe you are beyond saving

[Anonymous No.3838616]

>>3838602

>teach something crucial about .. the history of mankind?

You think The Wealth of Nations is not a crucial book as far as the history of mankind goes?