Books

I've been asked (often) at this point for a list of books.  Rather than reiterating, and relinking regularly...here's a single location for book recommendations.  By Category:

Science Fiction Essentials:

• Heinlein -- Assignment in Eternity is my favorite, and the big 3:  Stranger, Moon, and Troopers.
• Gibson -- Neuromancer, any other
• Stephenson -- Snowcrash, Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon
• Niven/Pournelle -- Lucifer's Hammer, Mote
• Card -- Ender's Game 
• Halperin -- The First Immortal
• Cherryh -- Cyteen
• Banks/Vinge -- Anything -- it's all singularity-thought
• Brin -- Not his science fiction, as much as the Transparent Society

Other fiction Essentials:

• Pirsig -- ZaMM
• Rand -- Pick
• Hugo -- Any.  Damn he's longwinded, but nobody does hero vs. hero like Hugo.
• LoTR -- The entire fantasy genre starts here
• Harry Potter -- Cultural Literacy requirement.

The Canon:
All of western Lit, starts with 4 books

• The Odyssey
• The King James Bible
• Dante's Inferno
• Shakespeare

Psychology:

• Kurzban -- Why Everyone (else) is a Hypocrite
• Goleman -- Destructive Emotions
• Carnegie -- How to Win Friends & Influence People
• Szasz -- The Myth of Mental Illness -- even if you don't agree.
• Harris -- The Nurture Assumption

People, Romance and Relationships:

• Farber and Mazlish -- How to Talk to Kids ... -- best communication book ever
• Neil Strauss -- The Game, and Rules of the Game
• Johnstone -- Impro -- The first third of this book, if taken seriously, would change your life
• Markman -- Fighting for your Marriage
• Kay -- Married Man Sex Life
• Farrell -- The Myth of Male Power -- old, but useful thinking.
• Sowell -- A Conflict of Visions

Evolution:

• Dawkins -- The Selfish Gene -- 3 steps to a replicator may be the best summary of a huge idea ever.
• Dennett -- Darwin's Dangerous Idea -- Dense, important
• Pinker -- The Blank Slate
• Ryan -- Sex at Dawn

Economics and Politics:

• Hayek -- Constitution of Liberty?  I think he's the best thinker of the last 100 years.  Full stop.
• Friedman I -- Free to Choose or Capitalism and Freedom 
• Olson -- Rise and Decline of Nations
• Friedman II -- Machinery of Freedom
• Ridley -- The Rational Optimist
• de Soto -- The Mystery of Capital
• von Mises -- Human Action -- The intro to econ as Praxeology is phenomenal
• Tullock -- something on Experimental Econ
• Bruce Bueno de Mesquita -- The Predictioneer's Game
• ?? -- Something on Public Choice -- Buchanan?
• Warsh -- Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations
• Tabarrok -- Launching the Innovation Rennaissance
• Cowen -- The Great Stagnation

Iterative Processes:

• Liker -- The Toyota Way
• Reis -- The Lean Startup
• Poppendieck -- Lean Software Development
• Beck -- Extreme Programming Explained and TDD by Example
• Goldratt -- The Goal
• Blank -- 4 steps to the Epiphany --
• Coram -- John Boyd
• van Creveld -- The Transformation of War
• Harford -- Adapt

Ethics:

• David Schmidtz -- Rational Choice and Moral Agency & Elements of Justice
• Jane Jacobs -- Systems of Survival
• Jon Haidt -- I can't find a book that does moral foundations theory yet...The Happiness Hypothesis?

Other Philosophy:

• Hume -- Enquiry and Dialogues
• Neitzche -- Any
• Hegel -- I prefer Sciabarra 2nd-hand on Hegel -- Marx, Hayek, and Utopia
• Karl Popper

Health

• McGuff -- Body By Science
• Taubes -- Good Calories, Bad Calories -- the uber-skeptic book
• Sisson -- Primal Blueprint
• de Vany -- new Evolution Diet
• Roberts -- Shangri-La Diet

Education

• Greenburg -- Sudbury Valley School Experience,  Free at Last
• Gatto -- Dumbing Us Down
• Montessori -- Everything she ever wrote -- smartest educator ever
• Kohn -- Punished by Rewards -- my favorite communist
• John Holt -- How Children Fail ... others as desired