Ask HN: What is the most mind blowing book you've ever read?

For very different perspectives on programming, check out Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programming (read it a decade ago and I use techniques from there every day.)

Hofstadter - GEB - for sure

Gödel, Escher, Bach - An Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas Hofstadter. Anytime I start reading a story which contains recursiveness my mind will feel warped and stuck in a loop at times.

Both a work of literary and technical genius.

Seconded. I think this one does a good job at resetting one's worldview to the state of 'what do we actually know?'

"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert M. Pirsing

Atlas Shrugged made me agree that in some cases, economic law can be unjust as well, and it would be moral to disobey it.

I find it slightly upsetting that Atlas Shrugged is so often on people's #1 list.

Atlas Shrugged is indeed mind blowing. The reason is because you can actually see this sort of thing happening (depending on where you are, in my case, Brazil). It gave me a new respect for entrepreneurs.

it was an endeavor to finish this book but I am happy to have learnt the above insights.

Really a tie between Blink, and Atlas Shrugged.

Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand

"Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman.

For a novel: Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, Truely changed how I look at computers and encryption

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

Fooled By Randomness - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Neal Stephenson's Anathem is fairly mind blowing if read in the correct mindset.

Every single chapter is potentially mind blowing.

"Guns, Germs, and Steel" and "The World until Yesterday" by Jared Diamond.

it is single handedly the most insightful book I have ever read

Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace

If you want "crazy-to-grasp", you want Ulysses, To the Lighthouse, Gravity's Rainbow, Infinite Jest, Moby Dick, House of Leaves, etc.