In university there is the required reading list. Over the summer, students everywhere can be seen avoiding their summer reading list. The good news is in life after school, we read what we want. I spend loads of time reading the likes of Nick Hornby and Elmore Leonard. I laugh and I’m thrilled but does any of it add to my intelligence or general knowledge? Probably not. (no offense intended to Nick and Elmore, shout out love you both!) This prompted me to not waste my adulthood in simple reading pleasure but to find and read books that made me smarter. I could go on and on about many of the books in this list, and paring it down to just ten nearly forced me to not put finger to keyboard.
So here is that list of ten:
The
BOOKS THAT MAKE YOU SMARTER
10. Development as Freedom by Amartya Sen
It’s about: Freedom is a corner stone for development. Sen, a 1998 Nobel Prize winner , says that dictators around the world argue that a strong hand is needed for economic development; freedom can come later, are dead wrong.
How it makes you smarter: We take for granted that we live in a land of freedom and often we criticize the United States of meddling in the internal affiairs of other nations but little understand the idea that the framework of a democracy produces the economic stability that other nations crave and are fighting about. Democracies, he points out, don't have famines.
9. The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki
It’s about: Running counterpoint to Popular Delusions, this book embraces the collective. Here the author argues that the collective information totaled within groups can result in decisions that are often better than those that could have been made by any single member of the group. Surowiecki presents numerous case studies and anecdotes to illustrate his argument, which pervade several fields, primarily economics and psychology.
How it makes you smarter: That a diverse collection of independently-deciding individuals is likely to make certain types of decisions and predictions better than individuals or even experts runs contrary to popular crowd psychology awakens a new paradigm.
8. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay
It’s about: Irrational exuberance, manias that produce bubbles are explained with numerous anecdotes and historical references. My favorite is the Dutch tulip mania and alchemists who were imprisoned until they produced gold.
How it makes you smarter: The dot-com bubble and bust of the 90’s and the present real estate bubble sound familiar now?
7. The Art of War by Sun Zu
It’s about: Thirteen chapters, each devoted to one aspect of war. This book has influenced Napoleon, MacArthur and even more modern military strategists. Sun Zu understood the importance of positioning in strategy. The position of both sides is affected by objective conditions in the physical environment and the subjective opinions of competitors in that environment.
How it makes you smarter: It has far-reaching applications into business and managerial tactics, and East-West relations. How could you not learn from a statement like “All warfare is based on deception.”? Kinda gives new meaning to all’s fair in love and war.
6. Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
It’s about: Its gist revolves around the fallibility of human knowledge. The name of the book has become an idiom in the modern language used to describe when someone sees a pattern where there is just random noise.
How it makes you smarter: Just as Taleb purports-- people resist the idea of randomness and tend to look for patterns in an attempt to explain the world.
5. Orientalism by Edward Said
Said, the man, was brilliant, complicated, debonair and troubled. A professor of comparative literature at Columbia University, his life’s work was centered in comparison: comparing the East to the West. Through comparison he hoped to gain insight that would lead to understanding and acceptance.
It’s about: Said in Orientalism, now a pejorative, argues that the West continues a long tradition of false and romanticized images of Asia and the Middle East. Exoticism is at the crux of Western writings about the Orient, which depict the East as an irrational, weak, feminized "Other", contrasted with the rational, strong, masculine West, a contrast he suggests comes from the drive to create differences between West and East that can be derived from immutable "essences" in the Oriental make-up.
How it makes you smarter: The idea that “understanding of self comes through understanding of the Other” Said transformed into a mantra that still impacts comparative literary theory, cultural and anthropological studies, and geo-political studies. There can be no peace without understanding.
4. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
It’s about: Not a tips and tricks quick course but something that should be read and reread until it becomes second nature. He goes beyond pat phrases like “be a good listener” and into the realm of understanding people’s basic needs and wants to win them over and without them really knowing what you are doing. That’s the key—manipulation but from a genuine and almost sweet personal interest.
How it makes you smarter: You start to understand yourself. It really burns me when I know I am in the presence of a Dale Carnegie master.
3. 1984 by George Orwell
It’s about: Considered to be Orwell’s opus magnum, the novel portrays the pervasive government surveillance and systematic control of the proletariat, and the dangers of the government's increasing encroachment on the rights of the individual.
How it makes you smarter: Since its publication, many of its terms and concepts, such as "Big Brother", “room 101”, "doublethink", and "Newspeak" have entered the popular vernacular. Reading it or rereading it should make you rethink the Patriot act and censorship.
2. Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
It’ about: Are we all participating in the same myth, the same story, and the same life? Campbell explores the theory that important myths from around the world and have the staying power of thousands of years all share a fundamental structure—the monomyth. From the introduction, Campbell sums up the monomyth this way:
“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”
How it makes you smarter: His own summary quoted above reveals why George Lucas, Jim Morrison, and Bob Dylan are just a few who were influenced by his work. It’s reach doesn’t stop there --classic examples of the monomyth include the stories of Osiris, Prometheus, the Buddha, Moses, and Christ, rely upon this basic structure.
1. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
It’s about: Remember Furby or Teddy Ruxpin? Somewhere in product purgatory, right? Wonder why some things never take off and other gain wide spread popularity? In this book, Gladwell offers extensive analysis into the factors and patterns that “tip” a trend into exponential popularity and helped initiate paradigm shifts in fields ranging from marketing to public health.
How it makes you smarter: A new paradigm anyone?
