The Selfish Gene

Hard to choose for myself who made the post. But some of my favorites are - 1. God: The Failed Hypothesis Book by Victor J. Stenger 2. The God Delusion Book by Richard Dawkins 3. Berlin: The Downfall 1945 Book by Antony Beevor 4. A Song of Ice and Fire Novel series by George R.R. Martin 5. A Short History of Nearly Everything Book by Bill Bryson 6. Billions and Billions Book by Carl Sagan 7. Flowers for Algernon Short story by Daniel Keyes 8. I'm Glad My Mom Died Book by Jennette McCurdy 9. Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden--from 9/11 to Abbottabad Book by Peter Bergen 10. Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space Book by Carl Sagan 11. The Metamorphosis Novella by Franz Kafka 12. The Selfish Gene Book by Richard Dawkins Gun to my head, pick one? The God Delusion.

The Machinery of Life by David Goodsell. It's a short book with beautiful diagrams and explanations of microbiology. The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. Its thesis is that everything is built up of smaller things that are all trying to replicate or get replicated. Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein. I haven't read the book, but reading about the book's argument that language is a type of multiplayer game, along with the aforementioned ideas about things being built out of smaller things that are trying to replicate changed how seriously I take ideas in general. I'm not looking for a universal truth anymore, I'm watching different collections of ideas compete with each other based on how well they replicate and how well they compete once they've entered a brain.

In general the Incerto series by Nassim Taleb (Black Swan, Antifragile, and Skin in the Game) was worth it. The Selfish Gene, System thinking A primer, I am a strange loop, Sapiens are some books that I read recently that had a lasting impression.

I remember reading The Selfish Gene as a teenager and being struck by how it made evolution seem almost obvious. Wodehouse is an embarrassment of riches of course. Good recommendations!

Aargh, Formatting! Try 2 : For the value of ‘best’ that includes (a) had a deep and long lasting impact on how I think about the world and (b) I consider beautiful pieces of writing in their own right, here are some in no particular order: The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman Naming and Necessity, Saul Kripke Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus, Ludwig Wittgenstein (These you might want to approach via a gentle introduction if you did not study Philosophy to degree level) The Rediscovery of the Mind, John R Searle Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler The Glass Bead Game, Hermann Hesse A Handful of Dust, Evelyn Waugh Diaries, Samuel Pepys Falling Off the Map, Pico Iyer A Time of Gifts, Patrick Leigh Fermor The Lonely Sea and the Sky, Francis Chichester The Way We Live Now, Anthony Trollope Bevis, Richard Jeffries The Diary of a Nobody, George and Weedon GrossSmith The Inimitable Jeeves, PG Wodehouse Hitch-22, essays, Christopher Hitchens Collected Essays, William Hazlitt Venice, Martin Gayford The Ascent of Man, Jacob Bronowski The Fabric of Reality, David Deutsch Too obvious a list, perhaps, but some gems for all that! Happy reading.

For the value of ‘best’ that includes (a) had a deep and long lasting impact on how I think about the world and (b) I consider beautiful pieces of writing in their own right, here are some in no particular order: The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman Naming and Necessity, Saul Kripke Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus, Ludwig Wittgenstein (These you might want to approach via a gentle introduction if you did not study Philosophy to degree level) The Rediscovery of the Mind, John R Searle Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler The Glass Bead Game, Hermann Hesse A Handful of Dust, Evelyn Waugh Diaries, Samuel Pepys Falling Off the Map, Pico Iyer A Time of Gifts, Patrick Leigh Fermor The Lonely Sea and the Sky, Francis Chichester The Way We Live Now, Anthony Trollope Bevis, Richard Jeffries The Diary of a Nobody, George and Weedon GrossSmith The Inimitable Jeeves, PG Wodehouse Hitch-22, essaysChristopher Hitchens Collected Essays, William Hazlitt Venice, Martin Gayford The Ascent of Man, Jacob Bronowski The Fabric of Reality, David Deutsch Too obvious a list, perhaps, but some gems for all that! Happy reading.

Offhand I can think of a few that I've read at least 2-3 times. And in a couple of cases, maybe as many as 4 or 5 times. There are probably some others that just aren't jumping to mind, but suffice it to say that these are all books I've found very valuable. The Four Steps to the Epiphany - Steve Blank The Discipline of Market Leaders - Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema Society of Mind - Marvin Minsky Mastering the Complex Sale - Jeff Thull How to Measure Anything - Douglas Hubbard The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins

Six Pillars Of Self-Esteem. Biggest effect on me of any book, by far. The only book that immediately jumped to mind without me needing to check my "read" list. I vaguely recall The Soul Of Sex giving me a healthier foundation for my own sexuality. The Power Of Myth and The Varieties Of Religious Experience for general spiritual goodness. The Selfish Gene has probably had a deep lingering effect on my thoughts about my life as a biological creature. Every Page Is Page One is very helpful for realizing (what I believe to be) the higher purpose of technical documentation, which is knowledge sharing.

The Selfish Gene is great. The portions on Evolutionary Stable Strategies are particularly interesting. It shows how Darwinism can lead to a "steady state", where a population contains individuals with competing characteristics (selflessness VS selfishness), and why this not at odds with selection.

When I read The Selfish Gene that explanation was very convincing to my (layman's) mind, but I've since wondered if some sort of "multilevel selection" mightn't do a better job of explaining both individual and group behavior. (The idea of "memes" is an interesting metaphor, imo, and nothing more.) This reminds me of a book I had hoped to read, "Darwin's Cathedral."

the Selfish Gene. this book can attract people who want understand how creatures work

Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. And not a book, but a documentary – The War by Ken Burns.

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins is great. Or something by Jared Diamond, e.g. The Third Chimpanzee.

* Thinking Fast and Slow * The Selfish Gene * Probability: For the Enthusiastic Beginner * How to Measure Anything * Rationality: From AI to Zombies * Cynefin: Weaving Sense-making into the fabric of our world * Major works of Friedrich Nietzsche

Selfish Gene

Code Complete - 2 times: clearly it's a good book. The selfish gene - 2 times - that's not programming wise, but it's an awesome book to get your thoughts rolling.

I listened to the Selfish Gene on Audible recently and was blown away by it. All through school I never had much of an interest in biology or genetics. I think if I’d read this earlier it may have changed my mind. Planning on reading the Blind Watchmaker at some point. Spurred on by reading the former I thought I’d listen to A Brief History of Time. Wow that is a whole different kettle of fish. I had to stop because I realized it wasn’t the right format (Audiobook), for me at least.

I've been studying history privately for about 8 years now, and 'Maps of Time' by David Christian has fundamentally changed the way I look at the progression of mankind. Essentially, he's described from the highest possible level how modernity has come to be. There is too much detail in the book to go into depth, but it's a fascinating, and more than worthwhile read for the knowledge-seeker. Another I'd add is 'The Selfish Gene' by Richard Dawkins. I have a Bachelor degree in science and never thought I'd be able to add to my understanding of evolution, but this book accomplished it. Almost everything I've studied can be broken into two periods - that I studied before reading the Selfish Gene, and what I studied after. Lastly, I'd add Hume's 'Treatise on Human Nature', specifically his theory of substances. The basic idea was that as you learn more information about a substance, how you define that substance changes. First you see an orange ball, and you think it's just an orange colored ball. Later someone tells you it's a fruit, and your understanding of it changes.…

The Selfish Gene & The Blind Watchmaker by Dawkins Evolution is the reason we exist! Understanding how it happens and why it can lead to counterintuitive outcomes is very important. He also narrates his own audiobooks and is excellent at it. The Blank Slate & The Better Angels of our Nature by Pinker Both books counter much accepted wisdom. The second book, in particular, will make you think of humanity in a fundamentally different light. The Black Swan & Fooled by Randomness by Taleb The role of chance in everyday life! It plays a big role!

"Debt: The first 5000 years" completely changed the way I view money, society, and relationships. "The selfish gene" changed the way I define life, opened my eyes to virtual life, and morality of selfishness vs. altruism. "Into the Cool: Energy Flow, Thermodynamics, and Life" changed the way I view the life and material existence. Whereas before I viewed them as two separate domains, after I see them as a spectrum. Chinese classic taoism treaties: "Dao De Jing", and "Zhuan Zi", offers a via-negativa way of thinking and view of existence, the values are beyond words.

- The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins - Godel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter - Language, Truth, and Logic by A. J. Ayer - Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella Meadows Books that serve as investment philosophy guides for those who've developed a habit of saving money but are looking for the "next step" in building more wealth. From the mind of one of the greatest investors of all time: - The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham (get the annotated version with an epilogue written by Warren Buffett!) - The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America A book that discusses what matters most in your life from a resource-allocation, measurable results standpoint (family, etc.): - How Will You Measure Your Life by Clayton Christensen A book I read 10 years ago that forever changed the way I manage productivity and organization both at work and in my personal life: - Getting Things Done by David Allen Books that show that our universe is just as crazy, if not crazier, than science fiction: - Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy - Quantum Chance: Nonlocality, Teleportation and Other Quantum Marvels…

For me the comparison of gene and meme blew me away. In short: There are not one but two things in you yearning/working to be reproduced: your genes (not body) and your memes/meme complexes. Thosr memes that are not good at getting reproduced die out, just like for genes. The book is now around 40 years old but still stunning in its insightfulness.

The Selfish Gene - Dawkins Freedom from the Known - Jiddu For decades I've been plagued by 'what is one supposed to do in life' question, I've been restless for years. These two books gave me atleast a logical framework to understand my frustrations.

The Selfish Gene has been the most influential book on my life. Especially when Dawkins makes the point about pre-darwininan philosophy needing rethinking. His point being that natural selection/evolution is such a profound notion that it should be embedded into the underpinnings of philosophy itself.

- "Rationality: From AI to Zombies" - probably the most influential book I've read in my life, profoundly changed the way I think. It's a collection of LessWrong essays on science and rationality. - "On Intelligence" and "I am a Strange Loop" - how mind works. - "Rework", "Zero to One", "Start Small, Stay Small" - insightful startup advice. - Fun autobiographies: Ghost in the Wires (Kevin Mitnick), iWoz (Steve Wozniak), Catch me if you can (Frank Abagnale), Just for Fun (Linus Torvalds), Elon Musk, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! - How companies work: Creativity Inc (Pixar), In the Plex (Google) - On writing: Art of fiction/nonfiction by Ayn Rand, Story by Robert McKee, Save the Cat, Step by Step to Standup Comedy. - Other: The Selfish Gene, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Serious Creativity, Hackers & Painters, Hacking Growth, Angel (on angel investing, by Jason Calacanis). Also collections of essays by Paul Graham [1] and Scott Alexander [2]: [1] https://www.dropbox.com/s/2no0sqybnxurpcd/Paul%20Graham%20-%... (https://www.dropbox.com/s/2no0sqybnxurpcd/Paul%20Graham%20-%20Complete%20Essays.epub?dl=0)…

Fiction War and Peace Crime and Punishment Count of Monte Christo 1984 God of Small Things Paradise lost Divine comedy Non fiction Selfish gene Meditations Madness explained (the best book I've encountered for explaining how the mind works) The Red Queen Tao te Ching

The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins How To Win Friends And Influence People - Dale Carnegie The Game - Neil Strauss The Four Steps To The Epiphany - Steve Blank ... among others.

+1 for The Selfish Gene, one of the best books I've read. If you have any interest in the process of evolution/natural selection, I highly recommend it. It's not as "political" or explicitly atheistic as some of Dawkins' more recent work either, so people who have a negative opinion of that sort of thing shouldn't be turned off by his name being on it.

"Letters from a Stoic" by Seneca "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins "Deep Work" by Cal Newport "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" by Jared Diamond

Goedel, Escher, Bach -- If you're reading this page you will dig this book. Guns, Germs, and Steel -- how circumstance drove civilizations. Fun storytelling even if it's a bit too "just-so". definitely trains you to look at any situation and seek it's origins with less initial judgement. The Visual Display of Quantitive Information -- gets at the essence of communication and medium. more than it seems! The Alchemy of Finance -- "reflexivity", but if you're also interested in Soros or some finance storytelling it's worth it. The Selfish Gene -- as everyone else has said. The Prize -- the history of oil. huh? yeah. Likely to change how you look at the history of technology, government, power, the saudis, and geopolitics.

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari is the best book I've read in a while. It's like Guns, Germs and Steel but better argued and far greater in scope. The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins was a great read too. A bit of a slog in some places but otherwise brilliant and insightful.

The Selfish Gene (Richard Dawkins) tldr; our bodies are just a side effect of the gene's greater plan

The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins; Red Queen, Matt Ridley; Sperm Wars, Robin Baker; Read in that order, the books explain much of what is going on in our society and lives. This has enabled me to to analyse my own, and others, actions and motives.

selfish gene, fountainhead

Perhaps because I had terrible schooling that never taught this kind of stuff: The Selfish Gene. Getting a solid grounding in how life can arise without, well, magic, shifted my thinking quite a bit. At a low level, life has no inherent meaning, so it's whatever we make of it. For many this is probably obvious, but if you grew up in a rather fundamentalist religious environment, it's quite the change!

On a personal level the Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins because it explained that "evil" is not evil but "mathematically" inevitable, thus allowing me to find (relative) peace of mind. On a professional level The Mobile MBA by Jo Owen, because it explained to me - the programmer - valuable management skills in no bullshit way (I can not stress this enough), thus allowed me to grow in my career.

Infinite Jest Ulysses The Selfish Gene The Histories of Herodotus Moby-Dick Gödel, Escher, Bach

I think we've swapped notes on a similar thread before, so we may have already talked about this, but let me say that if you liked Permutation City by Egan, you may also like Glasshouse by Charles Stross. I also "second the motion" in regards to both The Selfish Gene and *Gödel, Escher, Bach".

I'm sure there are many, but a few that jump to mind, in no particular order, and spanning both fiction and non-fiction: The Selfish Gene - Dawkins A New Kind of Science - Wolfram The Singularity is Near - Kurzweil Gödel, Escher, Bach - Hofstadter Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies - Hofstadter Atlas Shrugged - Rand The Fountainhead - Rand Nineteen Eighty-Four - Orwell The Trouble With Physics - Lee Smolin Time Reborn - Lee Smolin Ambient Findability - Peter Morville Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software - Steven Johnson Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age - Duncan Watts Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life - Albert-laszlo Barabasi Artificial Life - Steven Levy The Four Steps To The Epiphany - Steve Blank The World is Flat - Thomas Friedman not a book, but the various writings of Douglas Engelbart - http://www.dougengelbart.org/library/library.html Glasshouse - Charles Stross Permutation City - Greg Egan Neuromancer - William Gibson The Shockwave Rider - John Brunner The Society of Mind - Marvin Minsky…

My two cents: The selfish gene by Richard Dawkins - makes you look at living beings as software, and at the world as an immense optimization algorithm. Permutation City by Greg Egan - the perfectly rational idea that the mind is computable is rife with apparently unsolvable paradoxes. Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. Maths, logic, patterns, artificial intelligence, beauty, art and self-referentiality.

Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins, awesome stuff

The Selfish Gene is wonderfully tight, indeed very little noise and a whole lot of signal. Here's two books if you want to learn about math you might want to learn about: The Facts on File Dictionary on Mathematics by Gibson, and Foundations and Fundamental Concepts of Mathematics by Howard Eves, which takes a historical approach, but is not a history per se. More like "this is what the Greeks did, in this period the use of calculus was pretty loose and look at this equation that Euler thought was right, these are the steps that brought rigor to it" etc. Susan Wise Bauer has been writing a series of history books solely focused on "politics", i.e. no coverage of the arts besides occasional mentions; that can be a very useful framework to then hang study of things like the arts off of. Also no wild speculation like Guns, Germs and Steel is filled with, if it wasn't written down and passed down to us, it gets only brief mention. Here's the first one: http://www.susanwisebauer.com/books/history-of-the-ancient-w... (http://www.susanwisebauer.com/books/history-of-the-ancient-world/)…

Regarding 'the selfish gene', I still think that the concept that the gene is the unit of evolution and the resulting organism is just its proxy, is one of the greatest insights since Darwin.

The Selfish Gene - Dawkins, The Red Queen - Ridley I've read these books midway through high school, already interested in biology and medicine. The depth and complexity of how life forms handle evolutionary pressure is mind blowing. Why you favor relatives over strangers, the competition between mother and child, progress through collaboration of genes etc. You see the world completely differently (after reading many more books on geology, genetics, anthropology, anatomy, cellular biology etc) afterwards. For a novel: Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, Truely changed how I look at computers and encryption as a not mathematically inclined reader. Building a computer out of church pipe organ components etc.

This is embarrassing. I grew up with sorta fundie parents (they got better) and dropped out of school early (religious schools...), so it might be different for HNers that had a solid mental upbringing. A Brief History of Time because it pretty much slapped any thoughts I had of a supernatural universe/god right out of my mind. I know it's not highly regarded, but for a rather ignorant guy, it woke me up. The Selfish Gene (inc The Extended Phenotype). This is one I think is the most powerful, even for people that had OK education. Showing how life could possibly evolve, just with random mutations and non-random survival made it real to me that we live in a natural world. And not just that, but that since it's so obviously a natural world, it's up to us to decide what is right, what our purpose is. The earth and nature aren't going to help us there - it's our call, full stop. That is huge, and many otherwise seemingly well educated people don't seem to get it.…

Here's my usual list of recommendations, the best books I've read in the past 5 years. Fiction: - Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality If you know nothing about this book you might naturally hesitate to read "Harry Potter fanfiction" and assume that it's dumb/horrbile, but it's not. Just suspend your disbelief and read the first 5-10 chapters. Trust me, it's brilliant, hilarious, and life-changing. - Atlas Shrugged Controversial, I know, a lot of people here hate it for some reason, but it was incredibly influential on me, inspired my passion for entrepreneurship and science and philosophy. Still is one of the best books I am aware of. Nonfiction: - Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham Also a collection of his essays that you can find on github. He is one of the most clever writers I am aware of, but I assume you know that, since you're on HN. - "On Intelligence" by Jeff Hawkins This book explains in simple terms a very awesome and elegant theory on how mind works. Incredibly fascinating, I've learned a lot from it and it explains a lot of things, and will change the way you think about thinking process. - The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins…

Some titles I've recently read or at least have placed on my reading list. -------------------- Philosohpy Letters from a Stoic: Epistulae Morales Ad Lucilium - Seneca Meditations - Marcus Aurelius (must read) The Republic - Plato -------------------- History Five Chimneys - Olga Lengyel The Gulag Archipelago - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (must read) The Diary of a Young Girl - Anne Frank -------------------- Fiction (particularly dystopian) 1984, Brave New World, Animal Farm, Fahrenheit 451 (crime/action) Child 44, The Secret Speech, Agent 6 - Tom Rob Smith -------------------- Economics Capital in the Twenty-First Century - Thomas Piketty Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty - Banerjee, Duflo Why Nations Fail - Robinson -------------------- Economics/Decision making/Psychology Undercover Economist, Freakonomics, Nudge, Thinking Fast and Slow -------------------- Random titles The Selfish Gene, Self-Reliance, The Elements of Style (about writing), Slaughterhouse-Five -------------------- Some links to inspire your reading (though you may want to checkout the websites first to get an idea of the topics they cover) http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books…

Aaaah, a couple of ones that jump to mind: Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. I prefer the latter, but they're both great books. I discovered Rand later in life, after a lot of my beliefs were probably already pretty well locked in, but her outlook certainly resonates with me, and the inspiration I found in her books helps nudge me in the direction of truly to live my life more fully as my life, not someone else's idea of what my life should be. The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins. I was already a borderline atheist anyway, although I tended to use the term agnostic to avoid arguing with friends & family, considering that I live in the Bible Belt. But Dawkins' book showed me a counter argument to the "irreducible complexity" argument that made sense on a very fundamental level, and IR was one of the last things that kept even a vestige of "mystical" thought alive in me. After reading this book, I felt very comfortable in being an atheist, and I also decided to quit dodging the issue and start telling people that I'm atheist, whether they like it or not. Also, see above: I'm not interested in living a life that's about trying to please other people. I get one…

"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" - Lewis Carroll "Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There" - Lewis Carroll "Dracula" - Bram Stoker "Frankenstein" - Mary Shelly "On Education" - Bertrand Russell "The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy" - Douglas Adams "Animal Farm" - George Orwell "1984" - George Orwell "Lord of The Flies" - William Golding "Brave New World" - Aldous Huxley "Gulliver's Travels" - Jonathan Swift "The Selfish Gene" - Richard Dawkins

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, old but definitely worth the read. Changes the way you look at things.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance The Fountainhead Ishmael by Daniel Quinn The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

This book changed my entire outlook on the world. Added to this list are: Singularity is Near and The Selfish Gene

Non-fiction - 'The Selfish Gene' - Richard Dawkins Grokking the concept changed the way I thought about life forever. - 'Quantum Reality' - Nick Herbert One of the best introductory level books on quantum physics mysteries. No nonsense. - Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig The book that introduced me to Kant, Hume and philosophy of science. Just for that, I'm forever indebted to it. Some favorite fiction books - - Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson Loved 'Snowcrash' too. - 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress' - Robert Heinlein - Anything by Kurt Vonnegut, Milan Kundera, Somerset Maugham

The Selfish Gene was probably the most important book I ever read. It fundamentally changed my understanding of the world.

Richard Dawkins' "Selfish Gene" and "God Delusion" are excellent reads.

+1 for Selfish Gene, read a few years ago.

Anathem, by Neal Stephenson Consider Phlebas, by Iain M. Banks Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins Business Stripped Bare, by Richard Branson Programming Collective Intelligence, by Toby Segaran Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig

The best book I read in 2009 was The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. It's surprisingly accessible (I've never taken a biology class), and talks a lot about evolutionary game theory which I found fascinating. Some other books I read last year: How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker. It was a great book, Pinker's writing is accessible and entertaining. Much more so than On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins. More with Less: Paul MacCready and the Dream of Efficient Flight by Paul Ciotti. I really enjoyed this one, it was the story of the first team to cross the English channel with human-powered flight. What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell. I liked this one better than Gladwell's other books. There is less theorizing and arguing a point and more telling stories, which is what Gladwell excels at. The Mind's I by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett. If you are patient with what is sometimes (in my humble opinion) pointlessly arguing semantics, some of the sections are interesting.

The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien

"The Selfish Gene" by Dawkins. This was a result of asking my Twitter friends to decide between this and Art of War for me, and this won overwhelmingly. It's been a great read so far, and I'm really looking forward to learning more about how evolution and computer science can mix.

> I'd prefer things not directly technical though not necessarily fiction. Sounds exactly like me. I strongly suggest: 1. The Selfish Gene (Richard Dawkins) 2. The Demon-Haunted World (Carl Sagan) ...or if you need a little inspiration... 3. Founders at Work

Richard Dawkins: The Selfish Gene

The Selfish Gene (Richard Dawkins) I, Claudius (Robert Graves)