Books That Changed Our Perspective

janoorani24: I enjoy all of Diamond's books. This was the first I read - a great history of how societies change with the development of technologies and disease.

rybie2: An amazing work-- one of the most important books of our time

Laura.a: The idea that the environments that human cultures developed in affected that development was not something I had ever seen taken this far. Not just 'this is the weather, these are the plants' but, how does being isolated affect a culture vs not being able to escape one's neighbours, etc.

dchaikin: Changed my view on life

lizzy50usa: Had a large impact on how I think about the end of life

Hartsellang: Gawande teaches that if you care about someone, prioritize THEIR quality of life at the end of THEIR life. It's not about what is convenient for the people who will carry on. Keeping elders in THEIR home as long as possible when their mental faculties start to decline will dramatically reduce disorientation effects.

Laura.a: Introduced the idea that: since we know we are going to die, our culture should have ways of managing death that don't suck.

anglemark: Made me see the history of mankind from a new perspective

Laura.a: I did not realize how entrenched some of the religious thinking I had grown up with was until this book kept smacking me in the face with the assumption of evolution.

janoorani24: Beginning of my love of science fiction/fantasy

mzonderm: Being identical is not the same as being equal.

dchaikin: The first book that made we realize how powerless we are against the world

hipdeep: I read this as a very sexist little boy who had to struggle with the idea of identifying with a female main character. And I'm glad someone made me do it.

lizzy50usa: I read this when it first came out as a resident of the still largely-segregated South and it was a revelation.

JFinighan: I read this when I was about 11 years old. It opened my eyes to the world. It taught me the dangers of the mob, the horrors of racism, and that we need good people in the world.

paradoxosalpha: Changes my perspective every time I read it.

bjappleg8: Read this in my mid-forties and it was a revelation.

perennialreader: So many books are written about how to cope with being an introvert. And they are helpful. But what would be more helpful is one written for extroverts to be more mindful of the quiet ones.

msjudy: Validation for the lifelong introvert

norabelle414: What lizzy50usa said

wester: This book has definitely made my world bigger, and made me see how human-centred our way of thinking usually is.

lizzy50usa: I knew animals had senses other (and better) than our own but this book really brought it home to me.

lizzy50usa: Started my thinking about gender issues

katemcangus: I grew up in the church, attended many mission trips, and attended a religious college. I read this the first week at said college. It led to a profound shift in my belief systems.

questbird: Shows that anarchism is possible, but that humans will always wreck any governance (or non-governance) system

elahrairah: A glimpse into another world, one that I hadnt realised my dreams already occupied. How it might work, how it might fail, how we might live. It could be real!

skid0612: Shows how much hard work it takes to be free from Governance. An amazing novel.

sturlington: This book, also read in high school, made me think for the first time about how women are regarded in the world.

aprille: Decentering humans and considering how indigenous perspectives can be disseminated

gypsysmom: Showed me that scientific knowledge and elder knowledge can co-exist.

sturlington: From this book I learned that the world and the institutions we make are essentially absurd.

EerierIdyllMeme: Gödel's theorem and all sorts of related ideas with repercussions for epistemology.

birder4106: Dieses Buch zeigte mir, dass es noch Hoffnung auf besseres Zusammenleben auf der Erde gibt. Von schlechten Nachrichten überflutet, hatte ich beinahe alle Hoffnung aufgegeben.

Laura.a: I had not realized that of course my thinking about the state of other places in the world needs to be updated every so often.

v1v1enne: Without news or governmental agencies giving uneven weight to what seem to be facts and actually looking deeply into what is real, this book was an eye-opener

janoorani24: I re-read this book every few years to ground myself in what matters and what my values are.

saskia17: Reading this very young, this is the book that brought the horrors of genocide to life for me. It made it clear that it wasn't just a terrible story; it was real people.

rocketjk: Night helped me gain a new insight into the horror of the Holocaust as experienced by the individuals trapped in it.

Hartsellang: Night was my first glimpse at the banality of evil and how evil sneaks into our lives through the small cracks in our ethics, cracks that may seem minor and manageable at first but evolve out of our control.

Lyssa_H: I probably read this too young, but it was powerful and moving and undeniably lyrical for something originally written in Yiddish, translated to French, and then translated to English. On my to be read pile (well, after I learn Yiddish) is the original Yiddish version--I've heard he had to edit his down a lot to make it palatable to a non-Jewish audience.

anglemark: Changed my perspective on time

paradoxosalpha: Baby's first meta-religion (followed quickly by the Book of the Sub-Genius)

gypsysmom: This book, which I read in high school, started me on a life of caring about our environment.

Hartsellang: Until I read this book, I loved nature. After I read this book, I understood how a careless action that one person might think has only a minor/local effect on nature becomes cumulative and immensely negative when many, many careless actions are taken, especially when the full consequences cannot be predicted. Better to act safe than be regretful if you don't fully understand the consequences of an action against nature.

Lyssa_H: Terrifying and yet somehow comforting in that we managed to change.

anglemark: Made me consider sentience in a new way

perennialreader: Not everything is black or white.

rybie2: By far the most important and influential scientific work ever published. Every educated person should read it.

EerierIdyllMeme: Explains not just many historical misconceptions, but also how they're propagated.

BangkokYankee: Read as a young man, this book dismantled any notions I had of romantic love and replaced them with the understanding that love is not a feeling but rather an act of will, demanding responsibility, effort and discipline to transcend the self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.

R3dH00d: With echoes of Baldwin, Coates explains to his son (and the rest of us) the fear and pride of being a Black man and father in America.

vwinsloe: "the idea that God is micromanaging things is a real dangerous notion theologically." ~ Mary Doria Russell

al.vick: My first "longer" book, and another great introduction to fantasy

kindlibrarian: No question, magic is real. And good can triumph over evil.

dchaikin: Before this I just had no idea how racist law enforcement was by design

rocketjk: The New Jim Crow provided me a maddening eye-opener about the conscious racist policy, constructed almost entirely for the sake of political power rather than a true belief in its efficacy, that has burdened the African American community with purposeful mass incarceration and so many other attendant societal problems within the span of my own lifetime.

sturlington: I don't remember if this was the first Stephen King I read, but it was probably the most influential. It sparked my lifelong love of the horror genre and formed my ideals for friendship and being a good person in a dark world.

Nonconformisto: This book taught me that fear is not just an abstract concept

aprille: Women’s creativity and genius requires uninterrupted time and space, something few women had been able to acquire before the 20th century

lizzy50usa: Made me into a life-long reader of fantasy, among other considerations.

rocketjk: I first read the Lord of the Rings trilogy when I was in junior high, and for a while I read through the whole work once a year. I found a new love for mythology and for the passage of time and the depth of history over long, long spans of years. But I think now the main takeaway for me is to acknowledge that the things we love in the present, much as we take them as givens, are transitory. This, in the Lord of the Rings, is expressed by the fact that the Elves, after millennia, are leaving Middle Earth, and the world will never be the same.

themulhern: It did not so much change my perspective as articulate ideas and thoughts that I had been unable to express. Still a revelation.

waitingtoderail: While Jaynes's theory is difficult to take totally at face value, the ideas and discussion of thinking and consciousness is undoubtedly mind expanding.

elenchus: Yes, vulnerable to critique for making many unfalsifiable statements, anathema to many adherents of science. Jaynes's bold speculations are compelling and available for any to consider, who is open to it.

themulhern: What was cool about this is that it treated ancient myths and monuments as evidence for its theory. And it was exceptionally well written, much more literature than science. And it made fascinating declarations about language, which struck me as mostly true. This book made me think of the Bible not as a bunch of boring readings from a pulpit, but as an inherently interesting document.

EerierIdyllMeme: Explains how our brains don't work the way we think they do, how our reality is distorted.

R3dH00d: A problematic cliche, I know, but I read it at just the right time to learn how deeply fiction can pierce the heart.

Hartsellang: Nothing is cut and dry. Whatever your perspective, widen your view because you can't know all the conditions that affect the next person's perspective. Practice compassion.

birder4106: Wie wichtig sind Pilze für das Leben. Ein weiteres wichtiges Buch zum Verständnis der Natur. Für mich kommt es nach Charles Darwin (Evolution) und Alfred Wegener (Plattentektonik) bereits an dritter Stelle.

sturlington: When I read this in high school, it changed how I thought about "literature." I realized serious literature could include the fantastic.

JFinighan: This is the book that confirmed my wariness of authority, and how poorly equipped our society is to deal justly with marginalised people.

hipdeep: Changed the way I think about the brain and the body (or about cognition and sensation).

timspalding: The foundation of much of my thinking of classification.

nbmars: Resistance to injustice is possible without violence

gypsysmom: I learned so much about vegetarianism and healthy eating from this book.

tmerp: Turning point in my relationship with the earth.

tmerp: We choose plants for their traits--but they make choices, too.

aprille: How reporters copycat “man bites dog” stories from each other and perpetuate false narratives because they sell papers

kindlibrarian: Trying to settle down in South Dakota in the 1880s was really really hard. As far from the sweet television series as you can imagine.

tardis: I date my love of science fiction to this book, read to me in grade 3.

featherbear: Opened the world of the pre-20th century novel for me -- on to Bronte, Thackeray, Balzac, Richardson, Sterne, Stendahl, James, Melville, Tolstoy -- Dickens led me eventually to Dostoevsky, I believe

kindlibrarian: Today, CBT is a leading technique among therapists but when this book was written it was pretty new and kinda out there. Talking back to your negative thoughts is a powerful practice and I use these techniques to this day.

labfs39: This book completely changed my understanding of the Holocaust and how the majority of people were murdered

featherbear: I'm not religious but this book was part of my introduction to bible studies, which I got into for other reasons. Interest piqued, led me to other interesting titles such as Introduction to the Bible by Christine Hayes (actually an intro to the OT), Kugel's Bible As It Was, Robin Lane Fox's The Unauthorized Version; others, plus many TBRs I've still to get to, including the HarperCollins Study Bible -- slowly chipping away at that one. Oh, perspective? To keep in mind various past agendas however fuzzy while considering present day relevance.

R3dH00d: In these two beautifully written essays, Baldwin explains how the conectp of race has been manipulated by those in power to maintain that power.

knerd.knitter: This changed my perspective on the idea of what makes a monster.

waltzmn: This was the book that finally let me truly understand evolution -- all of it, down to the way it influences our thinking. And if you don't understand evolution, how can you understand people?

wester: The more profound a change in yourself is, the more difficult it is to find the self you were before to explain the change. So, this book just flipped the way I think about almost everything. It made me reinterpret almost all books I have read, and at the same time it showed me a pattern that connects (almost) all the books I read. It really felt like someone turned the light on, and that for the first time I really saw I had been taking the map for the territory. I suppose this book isn't for everyone, it's a long complicated active read. But if you are able to read it, do. Books don't get more life-changing than this one.

dchaikin: Water. It’s a problem. It’s political

janoorani24: This book changed my entire perspective of the American West and the essential lack of water.

EGBERTINA: not so much changed my mind- just blew my mind. the court had forbidden me to say that there was abuse. if it hadn't happened in 30 days- it hadn't happened. living in a situation in which i was compelled to normalise chaos; and the court further normalised it. i thought that i must have had this unique and isolated freaky experience with no name...

Laura.a: This book was not the first to have changed the way I thought about the world, but has become foundational in my view of the world. It changed how I thought about how my brain, and the brains of all other humans ever, worked. Now, I'm always using the ideas in this book when I'm reading/watching/listening to media, as well as when thinking about what humans are doing - including me!

sturlington: "Only connect."

JFinighan: I read this book several times through my pre- to early teens. It provided a shocking insight into the human condition, and what remains when everything to do with one's life and identity has been stripped away.

ahef1963: I have a deep and thrilling interest in nuns, and in monks to a lesser degree. To this day I read obsessively about fictional and real nuns. This was the book that kicked off that interest.

knerd.knitter: Whether everything (or even anything) in this book is true, it made me think about so many things differently.

Hartsellang: Think critically. Numbers are only as accurate as the teller wants you to believe. At the same time, numbers can reveal unexpected realities when fully evaluated.

rocketjk: An important connective work to The New Jim Crow, The Color of Law helped me understand the ways in which racism has been purposefully and consistently baked into the laws and social programs of America for decades.

-Pia-: Reassesses world history by focusing on Central Asia and the Silk Roads as the birth of modern civilization

TheLOFT: odd to be sure, but really striking exploration of how sexual predators make excuses to themselves and how our society enables them

paradoxosalpha: Disentangled the Edenic myth from the long Augustinian shadow of "original sin."

slimikin: At 36: Allowed me to see the assumptions I was making about the role and function of prisons, and what a society might dare to hope for instead.

ahef1963: In this book, the author actually talks to the reader! I was so excited by that and talked my parents' ears off about it. Without this book I would not hold a Master's Degree in English.

gypsysmom: Absolutely the best book about women and their bodies.

msjudy: THE book for a female in late adolescence during the 1970's

rocketjk: This book provided me with a much deeper understanding of the all-pervasive horrors of the any decades of Jim Crow oppression and the ways in which those conditions continue to affect our own times.

featherbear: This book and the Taylor Branch trilogy, especially Parting the Waters, opened my eyes to the heroism of African Americans

saskia17: How to think

tmerp: This is the collection that has story Arrival (film w/Amy Adams) was based on: beautiful story of aliens that are truly alien. Love "Tower of Babylon," too.

kindlibrarian: A departure from many dour vegetarian cookbooks that preceded it, it showed me and the world that vegetarian meals could be delicious.