The Campaign Builder's Guild

So, the many literary threads have gotten me to thinking about what books have actually had a profound affect on the reader.  I'm asking for a title, and author, and a few lines to describe why this book affected you, and why others should read it.

I'll start with 3 that have really helped how I think.

Bill Bryson's 'A Short History of Everything' was, to me, a great book for putting together big picture, common scientific history.  It put together some huge concepts in a very simple, readable format. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Short_History_of_Nearly_Everything

James Loewen's 'Lies My Teacher Told Me' describes the author's 2 year study of 12 major HighSchool history texts, and all the things that they really screw up.  I have to say, I always doubted the textbooks, but this was an eye-opener.  Loewen's very even-handed and honest viewpoints showcase the history of the United States in a way never done before, getting rid of the trappings of deification to allow people to really learn the lessons of the past, not just the dates and dry rote facts.  Newly updated to include the Iraq war.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Loewen

Dennis Stauffer's 'Clockwise Thinking' is a very short book that gets to the real meat of critical leadership skills.  Brutally honest, it teaches something I have adoped to heart, "Innovate or Die."

Daniel Quinn's Ishmael.  At first, it opened my eyes to the vast, cultural-wide "conspiracy" of the agricultural revolution.  However, in recent years, it is more of an eye-opening work on why dichotomical thinking is a very flawed way of thinking about the world.

Graham Hancock's Underworld:The Mysterious Origins of Civilization is a fascinating read on where civilization and humanity may have actually "began," as opposed to where most anthropologists and archaeologists believe they began, based on common, standard theories.

Edit: This post has been changed by me (Ishmayl).  For transparency's sake, the second statement originally read:

QuoteGraham Hancock's Underworld:The Mysterious Origins of Civilization is a fascinating read on where civilization and humanity actually "began," as opposed to where most anthropologists and archaeologists think civilization began.

Quote from: IshmaylGraham Hancock's Underworld:The Mysterious Origins of Civilization is a fascinating read on where civilization and humanity actually "began" (as opposed to where most anthropologists and archaeologists think they began).

Uh, are you suggesting that a single book outweighs one of the oldest and most well-established fields of academic study?

I can't recommend highly enough - Sacred Land, Sacred Sex, The Rapture of the Deep (Concerning Deep Ecology and Celebrating Life), an amazing multi-disciplinary work by Dolores LaChapelle which steps way outside the usual reactionary enviro-political rhetoric of the last 40 years I found it a fascinating read - it's at the top of my "3 titles everyone should read" list. It seems to be out of print at present, I got my (replacement) copy used off of Amazon - should still be available. She compares the objectification of phenomenon begun by Plato and underlying most of western thought to eastern (esp. Taoist) focus on the relationships *between* things. e.g., westerner aesthetics produce the arrangement of objects in a display while the eastern approach will be to arrange the space around/between the objects. Deep ecology then becomes a social concern with our relationships with the natural world instead of a political conflict regarding the use/misuse/preservation of objects in nature.

My second in the top three is Bucky Fuller's Critical Path - a difficult work to chew through but worth it. (He was an amazing thinker but not the greatest writer.) He presents a great deal of in depth thought about technological trends and patterns of development. There's some clear disagreement between some of his ideas and some of LaChapelle's, but as a balanced point counter-point think there's much to be derived. His Crewmember's Manual for Spaceship Earth is a good intro to his work even if a bit dated - it's far more accessible writing-wise

Finally, the shortest and easiest read is "Finite and Infinite Games" by James P. Carse, looking at social interactions in terms of cooperative, creative open-ended efforts vs. zero-sum, win/lose adversarial contests.

Transcending the list entirely of course is anything by Leonardo Da Vinci. . .

Chaos by James Gleick:  It's a history of the development of chaos theory/ non-linear studies with explanation of key concepts along the way meant for the lay-reader.  It opened my eyes to a lot of things.

Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Henry Lincoln, and Richard Leigh: The sort of nonfictional basis for the theological concepts in The Da Vinci Code.  It is interesting to read some alternate possibilities after being told one story for much of my life.  I'm not saying this is "gospel" truth either, but it presents some interesting possibilities.

The Essential Tao translated and commentary by Thomas Cleary:  A translation of Lao-Tzu's Tao Te Ching that I could follow fairly well.  My previous exposure to this classic of philosophy was in the Dover thrift edition, which was a paperpback edition of an Oxford Univerity press translation from the early 1900s, which felt a little clunky to me.  Reading Cleary's translation a light went on in my head.  I kept nodding and saying yeah, I always thought so.

Cleary's translations are pretty good over-all - that's the one I carry most of the time. Any specific text I can often find another translation that I prefer if I really do a lot of digging and comparison (assuming any others are available), but the shelf will display a lot of different translator's work - no one is as prolific and consistent. (I don't have any gripes about any of his translations, some are just even better. . .) He's also translated a lot of things no one else has. Overall if unsure among multiple choices the Cleary edition is always a safe bet.

Quote from: Snargash MoonclawCleary's translations are pretty good over-all - that's the one I carry most of the time. Any specific text I can often find another translation that I prefer if I really do a lot of digging and comparison (assuming any others are available), but the shelf will display a lot of different translator's work - no one is as prolific and consistent. (I don't have any gripes about any of his translations, some are just even better. . .) He's also translated a lot of things no one else has. Overall if unsure among multiple choices the Cleary edition is always a safe bet.

Yeah, he's not necessarily the best.  It's just that he's usually good.  Sometimes others are better.  I'm trying to remember the title, but there was an anthology of Buddhist scripture publsihed by Shambhala that included excerpts from a version of the Dhammapada translated by Jack Kornfield.  I own and am farily familiar with Cleary's translation of the Dhammapada, and I feel certain passsages sound better in Kornfield's version.

Edit: I looked it up on Shambhala's own website.  It looks like the book was Teachings of the Buddha edited by Jack Kornfield and upon further thought, I think the version of the Dhammapada quoted there was translated by thomas Byrom.

I can't think of which that might be, but I'm not surprised there - Kornfield's background is solid Theravadan and I expect he'll convey the flavor of the Pali texts much better. Cleary is at his best with Tao/Ch'an/Zen (and Confucist) material from Chinese and Japanese sources I think. Other texts/translators I've really liked are Karcher's Ta Chuan and Mitchell's Bhagavad Gita. My favorite I Ching translations/interpretations are by Deng Ming Dao and by Palmer, Ramsay and Xiaomin.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince. This is my favorite book. It represents the pinnacle of art by commenting on humanity and philosophy in an abstract, yet tractable way. It is a masterpiece in my eyes because of both its beauty and simplicity.

Another one I thought of:
Robert Alter's Genesis: Translation and Commentary - There are plenty of "direct translations" of books of the Bible in the world, but this one was the most interesting to me for suggesting various themes and objects that were never actually introduced into most canonical Bibles printed today.  

Quote from: Elven Doritos

Quote from: IshmaylGraham Hancock's Underworld:The Mysterious Origins of Civilization is a fascinating read on where civilization and humanity actually "began" (as opposed to where most anthropologists and archaeologists think they began).

Uh, are you suggesting that a single book outweighs one of the oldest and most well-established fields of academic study?

Absolutely not, merely suggesting that a new viewpoint (that many archaeologists refuse to acknowledge, because it goes against the standards of their studies) offers a lot of suggestions, information, and new ways of thinking that has never been properly detailed up until that book.  Nowadays, there are many dozens of books on the subject of pre-agricultural-revolution "civilizations," but Underworld was one of the first books to put it in layman's terms.

Edit: And by the way, "oldest and most well-established fields of academic study" means very little when the technology of modern days (such as radiocarbon dating, image restructuring, etcetera) has made much of those "well-established" ideas and philosophies obsolete.

[spoiler=Wasnt Hancock a movie??]I think it's hurting your case (to me, at least, I don't know about these other people :)) that in your first post you pretty much say most archeologists are wrong and in your next you give the one reason why they don't believe Hancock (they're boneheaded?). That's... pretty hard line, and kind of the same type of thinking your accusing other archeologists of having against Hancock. [/spoiler]

i AM GOING TO READ ALL OF THESE!!!!

This is easy.  I have my top 24 books on a separate shelf in my library.

24. A Collection of Essays, by George Orwell
Orwell was one of the best pure writers ever.  THe man had a gift for language and a keen insight into the human condition.  His essays are accessible, entertaining, and "Politics and the English Language" needs to be required reading each and every year that someone is in high school.  That essay changed the way I write.

23. The Gutenberg Elegies, by Sven Birkerts
A 1994 collection of thoughts on "The Fate of Reading in the Electronic Age", The Gutenberg Elegies really are a discussion about what makes books special.  The writing and language are quite poetic in places, and I return to this book every few years to remind myself why I love books.

22. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, by Friedrich Nietzsche
As far as cryptic, poetic Continental philosophy and proto-teenage will-to-power ego bullshit go, this book is at the top of the genre.  Nothing says "deep" like Nietzsche.  Put on your black turtleneck and pick up a copy today!  It's a phase that everyone should go through, because in the end, it's worth it and you can't really understand certain things without having gone through it.

21. Rebecca, by Daphne duMaurier
A beautiful, haunting novel.  Short, but utterly captivating and enjoyable.  Ever since reading this, I like to think I've understood a little better the power that one person can have over another, and how important it can be how we are remembered after our death.

20. Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
One of the more engrossing pieces of fiction I've ever read.  Not short at all, but utterly captivating and enjoyable nonetheless.  It's one of the best studies in characterization that I've ever seen.  I read it every few years as a reminder that some things are not worth dying over.

19. The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis
"My dearest Wormwood..."  Look, how could a book that purports to be a collection of letters between two demons about the corruption of a human soul, and that soul's efforts at salvation, not be the absolute H4XX0RZZ?  This book has helped me better understand my own moral failings.  I don't think you can put a price on that.

18. Brave New World Revisited, by Aldous Huxley
Written 27 years after Brave New World, this social commentary shows us how Aldous Huxley saw his vision coming true as the world lurched into the modern era.  Available on line here.  I'm a very big fan of social commentary.  I think that if you are going to talk about society, you need to know something about society, including several different ways to look at it.  This book helps you understand one way of looking at society, and helps identify some areas to which you may not have given deep thought.

17. 1984, by George Orwell
The ultimate study in human evil.  Read it and see the danger in what you and I, regular people, might do.

16. Six Walks in the Fictional Woods, by Umberto Eco
A masterful book on narration and the idea of "place" in literature, this collection of six of Eco's lectures has made me far more sensitive to how one creates "fictional worlds" through a story.  Once you've really read through this, your notions of representation, truth, and the line between fiction and reality will never be the same.

15. Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand
Love her or hate her (and I do a little of both), Ayn Rand's philosophy addresses very important human needs, and it is useful to understand at least the possibility that it might be morally OK for you to pursue your own happiness over that of someone else.  As silly as it sounds, that notion utterly changed my life when I was 19.  It is also social commentary written on an epic, fictional scale.  Now, I'll be the first to say that this book has some pretty impressive reservoirs of preachy suckage, but the story is an entertaining one.  And there are enough people who take the ideas in these books (her corpus) seriously that you will be behind the ball in the intellectual world if you aren't at least familiar with them.  Reading this book is the quickest route to fluency.

14. The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkein
You know the reason.  I couldn't be the person I am today if I hadn't read these books at an early age.  Maybe I would have been a better person, more grounded... I don't know.  But I wouldn't have been me.

13. The Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkein
If Lord of the Rings made me a D&D player, The Silmarillion made me the DM.  I've devoted months of my life to creating worlds as cool as the one inhabited by Feanor and Fingolfin.

12. The Dune Series, by Frank Herbert
The biggest inspiration of my fiction, and best genre books ever written, the books are filled with important moral lessons that I have found useful over the years.

11. Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville
If you're an American, you have to read this book.  It is an insight into the history and culture of our Republic that shows how completely at odds we are in the modern age with some of the ideals that came before us.  Whether this is a good thing or not is up for you to decide, but there has never been a better piece of social commentary written on Americans, than this book, written by a Frenchman who was essentially on vacation.

10. Troilus and Creyside, by Chaucer
My second favourite poem, this book was my "gateway" drug to understanding the notion of romance -- not in the schlocky Harlequin sense, but in the sort of cosmic archetypical sense.  It's really quite amazing.

9. The Republic, by Plato
You don't read this book.  It reads you.  And when you're done, it tells you what sort of person you really are inside, and what it is you want for the future of mankind.  It is thought by many to be the single most important work of philosophy in history.  I don't think I'd go that far, but there's nothing quite like reading one of the very first actual books ever written to develop an appreciation for how f***ing awesome mankind really is.

8. The Art of War, by Sun Tzu
Another book that changed my life, reading Sun Tzu is to understand the weight of responsibility, the desperation of human conflict, the cost of victory, and the importance of peace.  It is not #1 on my list, but it would probably be the single book I most strongly recommend.  An absolute must-read.

7. The Nicomachean Ethics, by Aristotle
Like the Republic, this book is old.  Real old.  And it shows that the concerns of doing what is right, and of being a good person (these are two separate questions, by the way) are as ancient as they are important.  This book helped develop my thinking on moral matters.  So strong an influence was it that I put it here, at #7.

6. Confessions, by St. Augustine of Hippo
The classic study on human weakness, wickedness, and the redemption that Augustine found in God.  This book is packed so densely with thoughts on free will, goodness, forgiveness, loyalty, and the power of man's will that I'm surprised it doesn't weigh more.

5. The Count of Monte Cristo, By Alexandre Dumas
Loyalty, treachery, forgiveness, and revenge.  Understanding these concepts is important to living a good life, and being able to look yourself in the mirror in the morning.  Reading this book has helped me understand these concepts better.

4. Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo
The single best work of fiction ever written, this book offers insights into human nature of -- quite literally I think -- every single kind that has ever appeared in print.  If the characterizations are at times a little cartoonish, and I don't think they are really, they serve a purpose: to understand what motivates certain people, to understand the ideas of sacrifice and bravery and deliberation and moral debt.  

3. La Vita Nuova, by Dante
Do you want to know what love is?  Read about it here.  The best book on love ever written, La Vita Nuova is actually a very long poem.  Dante FTW.

2. Ethics, by Baruch Spinoza
This is more of a niche choice, but it has so profoundly affected my life that I put it at #2 even though I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for everyone else.  This book is one gigantic geometrical proof, with dozens of definitions, lemmas, corrolaries, subproofs, and axioms.  It starts out as a discourse on metaphysics -- what sort of stuff the universe is made out of, and how that affects identity and so forth.  From there, it moves into the territory of what "good" is.  I don't really know how to explain it in less than 4,000 words.  I will have to satisfy myself by saying this: in the 17th century, Spinoza created a way of looking at the world that is compatible with Chaos theory, and which provides an explanation for how we can have moral good and evil in a world that allows us no choice in anything.  My signature line comes from this book.

1. Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius
I'm going to let him say it for me:
[blockquote=From the Meditations]Deal with irrational creatures, with inanimate things generally, with objects of sense, proudly and freely, for you are endowed with reason while they are not; but your dealings with men, who have reason, must have a social aim.  Invoke the god's help in all things.  And be not concerned with how long you may thus live, for three hours of such a life are sufficient.[/blockquote] There's a whole book of that.  It completely changed my life, and for the better.

Quote from: brainfaceI think it's hurting your case (to me, at least, I don't know about these other people ) that in your first post you pretty much say most archeologists are wrong and in your next you give the one reason why they don't believe Hancock (they're boneheaded?). That's... pretty hard line, and kind of the same type of thinking your accusing other archeologists of having against Hancock.

think[/i] civilization began," which quite frankly, is what science and philosophy is all about - coming up with new theories, and testing  them.  All I'm saying is that new theories have arisen especially in the field of ocean archaeology (which wasn't even an official study until diving suits became readily available), but archaeologists have notoriously put down this study as a "pseudo-archeology," even grouping it in the same kinds of pseudo-science classifications as astrology is often grouped in nowadays.  Remember, astrology was once a very highly thought-of "science," that today we know is merely a collection of studies and notices on coincidences, placed on the background of astronomical data.  Not to mention, science is constantly shifting and changing, and what we may "know" for fact today, or may have "known" in the past (like, I don't know, the Earth is Flat, and only 6,000 years old) often becomes mythology in the future.  It's the scientists who believe their knowledge is truth, which are two words that are not synonyms in my book, that Hancock takes into the ring, not all archaeologists, and I apologize if that's the impression I gave.

Edit: I have changed my first post to look a little less antagonistic towards archaeologists.  I am a fan of archeology, and even a bit of a hobbyiest student of archeology, and don't want to give the impression that "all archaeologists are boneheaded," or anything of the like.  I am just open to other theories than the "standards."

I know that the earth is round.  I flew to Australia once and watched the geography and the curvature the entire way.  If it's not a sphere, it's at least rounded like a pitted olive.

Let me rephrase: if I'm not a brain in a vat, and I have any perceptual access to the actual external world, then the world is round.