[scottlocklin]

"Money: whence it came from and where it went" by John Kenneth Galbraith -title is self explanatory.

"Darwinian fairytales" by David Stove -the antidote to Selfish Gene; funnier too.

"Prediction, Learning and Games" by Cesa-Bianchi and Lugosi -the right way to think about sequential machine learning -a toss up with "Conformal Prediction" by Shafer, Gammerman and Vovk

"Decline and Fall of the Roman empire" and "Italy and her invaders" (by Thomas Hodgkin) have had huge impacts on my understanding of civilization. Couldn't help but; it took years to read them all.

Recently "The Attention Merchants" by Tim Wu -how advertising has screwed up humanity since snake oil merchants, and how we're on the cusp of another revolution in this field.

I actually strongly disliked Hofstadter's book.