Best Books To Frame Thinking

Books from various genres that help shape and contour how to conceive reality in the 21st Century.
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3.67 avg rating — 88 ratings
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3.43 avg rating — 14 ratings
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3.77 avg rating — 65 ratings
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4.01 avg rating — 103,008 ratings
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4.12 avg rating — 25 ratings
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4.16 avg rating — 19 ratings
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3.30 avg rating — 23 ratings
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4.40 avg rating — 3,407 ratings
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4.73 avg rating — 11 ratings
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4.19 avg rating — 16 ratings
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4.43 avg rating — 7 ratings
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3.50 avg rating — 12 ratings
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4.09 avg rating — 1,665 ratings
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3.74 avg rating — 38 ratings
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3.80 avg rating — 567 ratings
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4.15 avg rating — 27,755 ratings
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it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 2 ratings
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3.96 avg rating — 41,275 ratings
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4.28 avg rating — 145 ratings
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4.56 avg rating — 43 ratings
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3.87 avg rating — 392 ratings
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3.86 avg rating — 415 ratings
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3.67 avg rating — 58 ratings
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4.24 avg rating — 2,636 ratings
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3.83 avg rating — 862 ratings
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4.28 avg rating — 327,416 ratings
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3.95 avg rating — 1,676 ratings
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3.85 avg rating — 1,223 ratings
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4.11 avg rating — 5,401 ratings
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4.37 avg rating — 328 ratings
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4.31 avg rating — 29 ratings
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4.17 avg rating — 372,752 ratings
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3.88 avg rating — 181 ratings
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4.08 avg rating — 6,375 ratings
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4.37 avg rating — 87,551 ratings
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4.23 avg rating — 639 ratings
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4.96 avg rating — 23 ratings
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4.17 avg rating — 9,866 ratings
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1,270 books · 1,361 voters · list created August 14th, 2010 by Charles (votes) .
2081 likes · 
Lists are re-scored approximately every 5 minutes.


Charles 26053 books
3660 friends
Tara 725 books
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Tyler Knowlton 432 books
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Jenny 321 books
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Janet 168 books
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Jacob 1972 books
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Joe 663 books
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Steve 323 books
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Comments Showing 1-19 of 19 (19 new)

dateUp arrow    newest »

message 1: by Charles (new)

Charles Thanks to everybody who has added on to this!

~Charles


message 2: by Leo (new)

Leo Walsh Excellent. I've read all of the top twenty five save the exact Chomsky titles (though I've read plenty of his work, and his key points tend to be stable), "Green Illusions," and "Hot Flat and Crowded" -- though I confess that I started the book, but never finished. Not sure why...


message 3: by Lacewing (new)

Lacewing Great list! Thank you, Charles, for starting it and everyone else for building it up. I'm tempted to put every one of 'em on my to-read list, except for the mere half dozen or so I've read.


message 4: by Charles (new)

Charles Leo wrote: "Excellent. I've read all of the top twenty five save the exact Chomsky titles (though I've read plenty of his work, and his key points tend to be stable), "Green Illusions," and "Hot Flat and Crowd..."

So what would it look like for these top titles to actually shape the thinking of leaders?


message 5: by Charles (new)

Charles Lacewing wrote: "Great list! Thank you, Charles, for starting it and everyone else for building it up. I'm tempted to put every one of 'em on my to-read list, except for the mere half dozen or so I've read."

You are welcome! How are you coming on the reading?


message 6: by Aurora (new)

Aurora Maybe add Nassim Taleb's Black Swan as a complement to the Structure of Scientific Revolutions?


message 7: by Maria (new)

Maria Fantastic list. I've added a few of these to my To Read list.


message 8: by Alisha (new)

Alisha Awesome list!! Thanks for creating it. Definitely reading some of these for my 2016 reading challenge :)


message 9: by Vincent (new)

Vincent Noel Too much Pinker, but this is a f*ing good list


message 10: by Sid (new)

Sid S Great list! I think I'll contribute a few books to this list too.


message 11: by Victor (new)

Victor Gotta say, this is the best list I've ever seen on the goodreads. Thank you


message 12: by Parker (new)

Parker commenting so I can remember where this list is


message 13: by Doodle (new)

Doodle Fascinating List. Thank you


message 14: by Alex (new)

Alex Great list!


message 15: by Anish (new)

Anish Sinha Such a great list!


message 16: by Valerie (new)

Valerie Brett This is like, ALL white men


message 17: by Yinzadi (last edited Jul 18, 2018 06:39AM) (new)

Yinzadi Valerie wrote: "This is like, ALL white men"

If for some reason you don't want to read European authors, just in the top 100: Jared Diamond, Naomi Klein, Viktor Frankl, Howard Zinn, Daniel Kahneman, Noam Chomsky, Steven Pinker, Sigmund Freud, Christopher Hitchens, Saul Alinsky, Yuval Noah Harari, Franz Kafka, Douglas Hofstadter, Carl Sagan, Thomas Kuhn, Jared Diamond, M. Scott Peck, Dan Ariely, David Graeber, Charles Murray, William Deresiewicz, Steven Levitt, Thomas Friedman, Jonathan Haidt, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Jonathan Safran Foer are Jewish (plus the Bible, obviously), Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Daron Acemoğlu, and Edward Said are also Near Eastern but not Jewish, Malcolm Gladwell, Paulo Freire, and Gustavo Gutierrez are Hispanic, Mohandas Gandhi is Indian, and Martin Luther King, Jr. is African.

It seems like much more of a Judeocentric than a Eurocentric list to me, but I agree that it's totally androcentric.


message 18: by hami (last edited Nov 19, 2018 05:50AM) (new)

hami It is still mostly white men.
and one Nazi person (Martin Heidegger)

The list is so race-blind that I am guessing the author probably thought Gandhi and Martin Luther King ,Jr are also white.


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