The Law

Economics: - The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith - Das Kapital, Karl Marx - That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen, Frederic Bastiat Philosophy / Politics: - The Republic, Plato - Second Treatise on Government, John Locke - The Law, Frederic Bastiat - Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes - Meditations, Marcus Aurelius - Democracy in America, Alexis de Toqueville - On Liberty, John Stuart Mill Fiction: - The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, Mark Twain - The Story of an Hour, Kate Chopin - Metamorphoses, Franz Kafka - Candide, Voltaire - The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas

I can't give just one, but here are a few that had a strong influence on me: "12 Rules for Life" by Jordan Peterson, "Why Switzerland?" Jonathan Steinberg, "Little Book of Common Sense Investing" by John C. Bogle, "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" by Butron Malkiel, "Liberalismus" by Ludwig von Mises, "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius, "A Treatise of Human Nature" by David Hume, "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman, "The Law" by Frédéric Bastiat, "Autobiography" by Benjamin Franklin, "Common Sense" by Thomas Paine, "Gespräche mit Goethe" by Johann Peter Eckermann, "Walden" by Henry David Thoreau, "The Old Regime and the Revolution" Alexis de Tocqueville, "On Liberty" by John Stuart Mill, "A Treatise on Political Economy" by Jean-Baptiste Say, "The Man Versus the State" by Herbert Spencer, "The Revolt of the Masses" by José Ortega y Gasset, "Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy" by Joseph Alois Schumpeter, "The Logic of Scientific Discovery" by Karl Popper, "The Machinery of Freedom" by David Friedman, "On Power" Bertrand de Jouvenel, "1984" by George Orwell, "The State" by Anthony de Jasay, "Sketched With the Quill" by Andrzej Bobkowski, "My Correct Views on Everything" by…

"I'm wondering which other books have you read that have had the most impact on you professionally or even personally?" Professionally: Peter F. Drucker's books. Personally: "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius, "A Treatise of Human Nature" by David Hume, "The Law" by Frédéric Bastiat, "Autobiography" by Benjamin Franklin, "Common Sense" by Thomas Paine, "Gespräche mit Goethe" by Johann Peter Eckermann, "The Old Regime and the Revolution" Alexis de Tocqueville, "On Liberty" by John Stuart Mill, "The Man Versus the State" by Herbert Spencer, "The Revolt of the Masses" by José Ortega y Gasset, "The Logic of Scientific Discovery" by Karl Popper, "On Power" Bertrand de Jouvenel, "1984" by George Orwell, "The State" by Anthony de Jasay, "Sketched With the Quill" by Andrzej Bobkowski, "Metaphysical Horror" by Leszek Kolakowski, "Rationality in Economics" by Vernon L. Smith, "The Machinery of Freedom" by David Friedman.

The Law - Frédéric Bastiat. http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html Capitalism - A Treatise on Economics - George Reisman. http://www.capitalism.net/Capitalism/CAPITALISM_Internet.pdf The Works of Lysander Spooner. http://lysanderspooner.org/node/2 The Machinery of Freedom David Friedman. - http://daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf Democratizing Innovation - Eric Von Hippel. http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/democ1.htm The Sources of Innovation - Eric Von Hippel. http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/sources.htm Introduction to Information Retrieval - http://nlp.stanford.edu/IR-book/html/htmledition/irbook.html Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms - David MacKay. http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/itprnn/book.html Introduction to Cybernetics - William Ross Ashby. http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/books/IntroCyb.pdf "Man-Computer Symbiosis" and "The Computer As A Communication Device" - J.C.R. Licklider. http://memex.org/licklider.pdf Design For A Brain - William Ross Ashby. https://archive.org/details/designforbrainor00ashb The Writings of Douglas Engelbart. http://www.dougengelbart.org/library/library.html…

Audiobook: I just finished Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson. I highly recommend it if you're into fantasy type novels. It has a unique magic system and is very well written. I've been off and on with War and Peace for a while. Kind of dry so far. Kindle: The Law by Frederic Bastiat, extremely good book describing the fundamental purpose of law and government. Dead Tree: Essence of Discrete Mathematics by Neville Dean, seems to be pretty good book, just haven't devoted enough time to reading it.

Another vote for Atlas Shrugged. And like you, I found it put a lot of things I already felt, properly, albeit at times rather verbosely. Along with this, I would insist on The Law, by Frederic Bastiat. Written in 1850, this book still wows me.

Fredric Bastiat - "The Law" - http://www.freeaudio.org/fbastiat/thelaw.html (audio book) http://www.amazon.com/Law-Frederick-Bastiat/dp/1933550147/ (5 stars with 83 reviews so it's not just me) It'll only take about forty minutes to finish. If you go with a Teaching Company course I highly recommend their "Great Minds" series (though without a library it is a bit spendy): http://www.teach12.com/ttcx/coursedesclong2.aspx?cid=470&;