Books to Reconfigure Your World
Seven books that will shift your thinking.
The following are some of the best nonfiction books I’ve read in the past couple years, spanning many disciplines. Each has not only taught me something new, but changed the way I look at and think about the world.
1. To change how you think about time and the future.
Descriptive Amazonian book-blurb excerpt: “Using the designing and building of the Clock of the Long Now as a framework, this is a book about the practical use of long time perspective: how to get it, how to use it, how to keep it in and out of sight…Taking the time to think of the future is more essential now than ever, as culture accelerates beyond its ability to be measured…This is a potent book that combines the chronicling of fantastic technology with equally visionary philosophical inquiry.”
2. To change how you think about systems.
Descriptive Amazonian book-blurb excerpt: “Thinking in Systems is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global…this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world, showing readers how to develop the systems-thinking skills that thought leaders across the globe consider critical for 21st-century life.”
3. To change how you think about media and storytelling.
Descriptive Amazonian book-blurb excerpt: “Not long ago we were spectators, passive consumers of mass media. Now, on YouTube and blogs and Facebook and Twitter, we are media. No longer content in our traditional role as couch potatoes, we approach television shows, movies, even advertising as invitations to participate — as experiences to immerse ourselves in at will. Frank Rose introduces us to the people who are reshaping media for a two-way world, changing how we play, how we communicate, and how we think.”
4. To change how you think about information.
Descriptive Amazonian book-blurb excerpt: “…a revelatory chronicle and meditation that shows how information has become the modern era’s defining quality — the blood, the fuel, the vital principle of our world…From the invention of scripts and alphabets to the long-misunderstood talking drums of Africa, Gleick tells the story of information technologies that changed the very nature of human consciousness…[and] provides portraits of the key figures contributing to the inexorable development of our modern understanding of information…”
5. To change how you think about cities and urbanism.
Descriptive Amazonian book-blurb excerpt: “A direct and fundamentally optimistic indictment of the short-sightedness and intellectual arrogance that has characterized much of urban planning in this century…Jane Jacobs writes about what makes streets safe or unsafe; about what constitutes a neighborhood, and what function it serves within the larger organism of the city; about why some neighborhoods remain impoverished while others regenerate themselves…[this book] provides an essential framework for assessing the vitality of all cities.”
6. To change how you think about food and gastronomy.
Descriptive Amazonian book-blurb excerpt: “A delightful and hilarious classic about the joys of the table, The Physiology of Taste is the most famous book about food ever written…a historical, philosophical, and epicurean collection of recipes, reflections, and anecdotes on everything and anything gastronomical.”
7. To change how you think about personal space.
Descriptive Amazonian book-blurb excerpt: “An examination of various cultural concepts of space and how differences among them affect modern society. Introducing the science of “proxemics,” Hall demonstrates how man’s use of space can affect personal business relations, cross-cultural exchanges, architecture, city planning, and urban renewal.”
