Your favourite books (not only poker)

[punter11235]

Hello !

I am going to buy some books. Some missing from my poker library, some chess books , some books about other games...
I wonder if there is a book which you really can recommend, which you are real happy to read and you were simply delighted by.
Areas that interested me :
-gambling , poker
-games (chess, go , backgammon, other "classical" games)
-computer programming
-stockmarket, also currency market (forex etc)
-psychology (also sociology)
-mathematic
-philosophy

THanks for suggestions

[Jordan Olsommer]

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-computer programming

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"Code" (Microsoft Press, forget the author's name) is an excellent introduction

"Hackers" by Steven Levy is a must read if you're at all interested in the history, or just for profiles of some pretty bad-ass guys. (There's a book called "Out of their minds" in the same vein, but I think the only way you can get it is used on amazon)

And if you have done some programming and want to get much better at it, Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming" series is an absolute must.

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-stockmarket, also currency market (forex etc)

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"One up on Wall Street" by Peter Lynch
"A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market" by John Allen Paulos
"Fooled by Randomness" by Nassim Taleb

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-psychology (also sociology)

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"Phantoms in the Brain" by VS Ramachandran (quite possibly the single greatest book I've ever read; if you for whatever reason decide to pick one book from this list to read, I'd make it this one).
"A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness" by VS Ramachandran
"The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" by Oliver Sacks
'How We Know What Isn't So" by Thomas Gilovich

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-mathematic

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"Innumeracy" and "Beyond Numeracy" by John Allen Paulos are great books esp. if you want a readable introduction to a broad range of advanced mathematical concepts
"The Art and Craft of Problem Solving" by Paul Zeitz (good book, but more of a textbook)

pretty much anything by W.W. Sawyer

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-philosophy

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"The Stoic Art of Living" by Tom Morris
"If Aristotle Ran General Motors" by Tom Morris
"The Tao Te Ching" by Lao Tzu (my personal favorite translation is by Stephen Mitchell)
"The History of Western Philosophy" by Bertrand Russell
"The Passions" by Robert C. Solomon (if you've ever seen the movie "waking life", you might remember him as the professor giving the miniature lecture on existentialism at the beginning)


Those are some books that I've really enjoyed over the years; perhaps you will enjoy them as well.

[gila]

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-philosophy

THanks for suggestions

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"Basic Writings" and "Poetry, Language, Thought" - Heidegger
"Ich und Du" and "Eclipse of God" - Martin Buber
"Religion and Nothingness" - Keiji Nishitani
"An Inquiry Into the Good" - Kitaro Nishida
"The Meditations" - Marcus Aurelius

[punter11235]

THanks for great replys. I will definitely buy some of those ( a few Ive already read or skim through).
I will buy some of these based on other internet reviews.

Everyone must read George Orwell's "1984" and Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World". Don't bother with "Brave New World Revisited" though.

[raisins]

One of my favorite books is about the life and work of conceptual artist Robert Irwin. The book is mostly about art and an artist who is looking to go beyond the pictorial. He is very interested in the nature of perception so there is material in there that touches on psychology and philosophy. Robert Irwin also supported himself for a good portion of his life by playing the horses and there is a chapter with his thoughts on gambling that is probably the most interesting writing I've ever come across on gambling, not that it will necessarily improve your game but his take is unique.

I second the recommendation for Fooled by Randomness. Reminiscences of a Stock Operator is probably known to you but it must be mentioned. The Market Wizards series is good reading as well.

The Crowd and Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds are both (mass) psychology books that are also about the market. For straight psychology I would read Uncommon Therapy which is about Milton Erickson. I think hypnosis is an important and perhaps understated phenomenon in psychology. Two good books on it are Therapeutic Trances by Stephen Gilligan and Trancework by Michael Yapko.

You know who the mainstays in philosophy are. My advice is to read the ones who are good writers (Plato, Nietzsche) and get the rest through commentaries. Bernard Williams is a modern philosopher who is a good writer and stands outside of the recent stream of literary criticism / post-modernism. The article on him in Wikipedia is pretty good and will let you know if you would be interested in him. Another article that gives a good presentation of him is his obituary by the classicist Martha Nussbaum; it is available on the web. For philosophy more in the sense of "worldly wisdom" here are some authors: Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Heraclitus, Lao Tsu (I agree with the Stephen Mitchell translation recommendation), Baltasar Gracian, Francois de la Rochefoucauld.

For math, I haven't read it yet but I've heard some good things about Who is Foruier?

For backgammon you know about Magriel and Robertie. In a recent thread Robertie recommended Classic Backgammon Revisited by Bagai to me. Some day I'll have the opportunity to get into it.

That enough books?

regards,

raisins

[punter11235]

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That enough books?


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Yes. Thanks guys for great responses. I wont buy all these at once but I have a nice little list for following months [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[Jonas Wa]

Add a good math book:
Principles of Mathematical Analysis (Walter Rudin)

[maurile]

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"Phantoms in the Brain" by VS Ramachandran (quite possibly the single greatest book I've ever read; if you for whatever reason decide to pick one book from this list to read, I'd make it this one).

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I second this. I absolutely couldn't put this book down. It's full of fascinating stuff.

[Kama45]

Are there punters in other sports other than American football?