The Conquest of Happiness

The Conquest of Happiness by Bertrand Russell. Just good reflections on happiness and life. Reminds me I need to read it again.

Most of mine are going to be books by philosophers or scientists (about philosophy or other things). - The Conquest of Happiness by Bertrand Russell was a pretty good one. He has a lot of ideas that were ahead of their time (positive psychology, etc). You can see a lot of parallels between his ideas and modern Stoicism (although Russell criticized it elsewhere, I think he came to some of the same conclusions). - Introduction To Mathematical Philosophy by Bertrand Russell. Another Russell one. I think this is probably the clearest and easiest to understand explanation I've ever read of the underpinnings of mathematical foundations. It's written in a style that should be accessible to almost anyone with a high school education. He wrote it while he was in prison (for refusing to be drafted) during WW1. Apparently he left a copy of it to the prison warden. - An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume. This is worth reading because it is the motivation for basically all of modern philosophy of science (at least in the west). It's also pretty easy to read and if you read it you'll be able to more easily understand other books and papers that are responses to it.…

1) All of Robin Sharma's books - especially The Monk who sold his Ferrari 2) The Conquest of Happiness by Bertrand Russell 3) Self Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson 4) The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius 5) Barking up the wrong tree by Eric Barker 6) This might be strange - but Harry Potter series also teach us a lot, especially about Courage and Conviction.

It was the second year of my "read books like an adult" effort and there were some great ones: Infinite Jest (David Foster Wallace)* I was blown away by how completely delightful it was to read. I went in to it with a lot of trepidation about its length and esoteric fixation, but found myself completely immersed in the book in a way that I hadn't been since I was kid. I didn't pick up any hard and fast lessons from the book (indeed, its thesis is mostly that life is hard and the easy answers that are out there are toxic), but I definitely came away from it feeling like it was a bit more acceptable to share what I really thought and felt with others. Reading the book is like entering an intimate communion with DFW's mind and it reinforced in me the importance of inter-human connection in that way. Every Love Story is a Ghost Story (D.T. Max)…

Here's a few I've really liked that have a broader subject matter than only what you asked for. I figure that if you like to read you'd like these books. --- NON-FICTION --- Darkness Visible A Mathemematician's Apology Omnivore's Dilemma Fermat's Enigma The Code Book Born to Run Judgement of Paris Siddhartha Killing Pablo The Victorian Internet Lone Survivor I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman Papillon Into Thin Air Born on a Blue Day Touching the Void Got Fight The Conquest of Happiness --- FICTION --- Switch Bitch Lost Horizon The Cuckoo's Egg The Simlarillion The Time Traveler's Wife The Alchemist The Count of Monte Cristo A Canticle for Leibowitz Neverwhere My Uncle Oswald Stories of Your Life and Others Invisible Cities Life of Pi Atlas Shrugged --- WALL STREET / FINANCE --- When Genius Failed Liar's Poker Buffett (Lowenstein) Bull! Black-Scholes and Beyond (textbook) Fixed Income Securities (textbook) The Road to Serfdom The Smartest Guys in the Room Fortune's Formula The Fourth Turning Inside the House of Money --- ENTREPRENEURSHIP / COMPUTERS (non-textbook) --- Masters of Doom It's Not About the Bike Dot. Bomb Founders at Work The PayPal Wars…

I would not recommend any compilations of philosophy. The great thing about philosophy is reading the rationales and the results, not only the results. "Ricard+Revel - The Monk and the Philosopher" http://www.amazon.com/Monk-Philosopher-Father-Discuss-Meanin... (http://www.amazon.com/Monk-Philosopher-Father-Discuss-Meaning/dp/0805211039) "Socrates(/Plato) - The Allegory of the Cave" http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/allegory.html "Plato(/Socrates/others) - Symposium" http://www.amazon.com/Symposium-Plato/dp/0872200760 "Bertrand Russell - The Conquest of Happiness" http://www.amazon.com/Conquest-Happiness-Bertrand-Russell/dp... (http://www.amazon.com/Conquest-Happiness-Bertrand-Russell/dp/0871401622)