Comments on: 10,000 Hours of Reading

Question: 10,000 Hours of Reading

Christ, what an asshole — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 12:57:05 -0800

I'm fascinated with books that deal with the social psychological conscious like Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers/Blink/Tipping Point or Stephen Dubner/Steven Levitt's Freakonomics. I'd love to read more books in the same vein. Any choice authors or books I should check out?

By: patricio

patricio — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:10:13 -0800

Depending on which bits of Freakonomics you enjoyed, you might like The Logic of Life by Tim Harford

By: world b free

world b free — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:12:04 -0800

Try these:

The Drunkard's Walk, Leonard Mlodinow

More Sex Is Safer Sex, Stephen Landsburg

The Long Tail, Chris Anderson

And if you're into baseball, Stephen Jay Gould wrote an amazing book on mathematical analysis of basebal called Triumph and Tragedy in Mudville. It's not so much SABRmetrics...it has essays like why there won't be any more .400 hitters because so many players are nearing physical perfection.

By: bjrn

bjrn — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:14:28 -0800

You might enjoy 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.

By: Ookseer

Ookseer — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:16:52 -0800

Though a little more personal than social, Stubling on Happiness triggered a lot of the same interest for me that your books did. It only looks like a self help book.

By: songfromme

songfromme — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:22:21 -0800

Barry Schwartz's The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less.

By: etc.

etc. — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:29:18 -0800

I think Steven Pinker's How the Mind Works would be right up your alley.

By: politikitty

politikitty — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:40:46 -0800

Are you regularly reading Marginal Revolution? One of the contributors wrote Discover Your Inner Economist, which satisfied my inner-wonk. A bit basic economics, but I like that he applies it to things like "where should you go to dinner? What charity should you contribute to?" He also suggests most of my non-fiction. On my to read list that might be something that interests you:

Nudge, Predictably Irrational, and Traffic: Why We Drive and what it says about us.

Also really enjoyed The Wisdom of Whores. While it's about the AIDS epidemic, a lot of it focuses on the social mechanisms behind both the spread of AIDS and the public policy designed to (fairly ineffectually) stop the spread of AIDS.

By: xotis

xotis — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:42:26 -0800

First off, go get Gang Leader for a Day. It's from the author of the chapter on gangs that appears in Freakonomics.

I also think you'll enjoy the social observations in Geography of Bliss

By: xotis

xotis — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:44:14 -0800

oh, and nthing Stumbling on Happiness. It's a great read, and endorsed, more or less, by Malcom Gladwell.

By: Danf

Danf — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:44:51 -0800

Guns, Germs, and Steel is a book I am reading now, and it seems to me (for want of a better term) a "Gladwellian" approach to the whole of human history. I like it for the same reason that I have liked a lot of Gladwell's articles (although I have yet to read any of his books).

By: carsonb

carsonb — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:52:00 -0800

I've enjoyed reading James Gleick's books and articles.

By: nam3d

nam3d — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:54:05 -0800

Quirkology: The Curious Science of Everyday Lives

Bad Science

Irrationality

By: Windigo

Windigo — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:00:24 -0800

Naomi Klein's No Logo.

By: box

box — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:08:55 -0800

Talleb's Black Swan seems to be popular among folks who like Gladwell and Levitt.

By: TNOTGILL

TNOTGILL — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:11:24 -0800

Jonah Lehrer's How We Decide just came out and it's amazing. Jonah has a gift for storytelling while explaining the neuroscience behind the way we make decisions.

By: Sova

Sova — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:23:09 -0800

Two classics of this genre from the 1950s:

Vance Packard's The Hidden Persuaders

and

Eric Hoffer's The True Believer

They might be a little different in content/style, but are definitely the grandparents of the books you seem to like. You may also be interested in anything by Marshall McLuhan if you've not alread tried him, though don't blame me if you think him preposterous.

By: eclectist

eclectist — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 15:12:28 -0800

Well, if Sova's going to recommend McLuhan, I'm going to recommend Walter Ong's Orality and Literacy and Eric Havelock's Preface to Plato. Whereas other recommendations above deal with social impacts of technology or economics or neurosciences, etc, Havelock, Ong and their succedents deal with society and literacy, though I hasten to add that this may be getting a little far afield of where you want to go.

By: bjrn

bjrn — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 15:40:47 -0800

Nassim Taleb (author of Black Swan) has also written Fooled by Randomness, which is also a bit Gladwell/Freakonomics-like.

By: a womble is an active kind of sloth

a womble is an active kind of sloth — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 15:56:30 -0800

Schelling: Micromotives and Macrobehavior

Schelling won the nobel prize

By: Nerro

Nerro — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 16:52:35 -0800

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini

By: trinity8-director

trinity8-director — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 17:52:46 -0800

Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why by Laurence Gonzales

By: starman

starman — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 18:24:40 -0800

Seconding Predictably Irrational.

By: radicarian

radicarian — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 00:16:13 -0800

I also recommend both of Taleb's books (Fooled by Randomness slightly more)

If you don't mind dealing with 1850s English, you might enjoy Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds

By: zennoshinjou

zennoshinjou — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 04:48:17 -0800

Sway

By: angel29

angel29 — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 09:35:27 -0800

FREAKCONOMICS IS A GREAT READ! Would recommend that book to everyone

By: djb

djb — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:17:01 -0800

The Numerati, Stephen Baker
Why We Buy & The Call of the Mall, Paco Underhill
Buyology, Martin Lindstrom

By: divabat

divabat — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:34:26 -0800

I like these sort of books too! I wonder if there's a term for them.

I recommend Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky, about groups that form without necessarily having a set structure.

By: AceRock

AceRock — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 17:37:35 -0800

Steven Johnson, particularly Mind Wide Open and Emergence.

By: upplepop

upplepop — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 20:23:16 -0800

William Strauss and Neil Howe have written several fascinating books on a four-stage historical cycle of generational attributes. Start with The Fourth Turning and Generations.

By: rongorongo

rongorongo — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 03:46:16 -0800

You might like Paco Underhill's "Why we buy: The Science of Shopping"

By: PercussivePaul

PercussivePaul — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:16:22 -0800

I came here to recommend Schelling: Micromotives and Macrobehavior but I was beaten to it. It's a fantastic, elegant book about how people's simple preferences can explain complex societal behavior like segregated neighborhoods, traffic patterns, and the way auditoriums fill up.

By: dboorstin

dboorstin — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:44:25 -0800

"Bowling Alone" by Robert D. Putnam, 2000 bestseller about the decline of America's sense of community. Also a 1986 classic, "Objects of Desire: Design and Society from Wedgwood to IBM" by Adrian Forty (EG, Why did Montgomery Ward offer 131 different pocket-knives in their 1895 catalogue? To match the layers of a highly stratified society)