This book changed my lifeThe Goat writes, "Some books have made a huge impact on my life." It's true. It wasn't until the b3ta mods read the Flashman novels that we changed from mild-mannered computer operators into heavily-whiskered copulators, poltroons and all round bastards in a well-known cavalry regiment.
What books have changed the way you think, the way you live, or just gave you a rollicking good time?
Friendly hint: A bit of background rather than just a bunch of book titles would make your stories more readable
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chthonic, Thu 15 May 2008, 15:11)
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Another cool sciency oneGuns, Germs and Steel. It's ace, and one of the few cases I can think of where someone presents a scientific theory that you can be almost sure it's true *before you even see the evidence* (Darwin's the other one).
Lots of cracking stuff in there, but the theory in question is this: The reason that Europe and Asia developed complex industrial civilizations before America or Africa is that Europe/Asia is aligned along an East-West axis rather than North-South, which means that agricultural developments in one part of the continent are likely to be successful in other parts as well. Conversely, even if someone in Mexico had developed a new high-yield strain of maize, it would have been unlikely to be successful in Brazil.
Genius. Like I say, there's a lot more to the book than that - read it, it's mind-blowing. Other good ones about human development are The Third Chimpanzee and Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language. And while I'm at it, read Consciousness Explained and How the Mind Works, and indeed anything by Daniel Dennett or Steven Pinker.
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flatfrog Staring vacantly into space, Mon 19 May 2008, 15:28,
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