| I don't know if I really even believe in the idea of "must read" books, but here are at least a few I highly recommend. In no particular order. FICTION The Mysterious Island - Verne The Time Machine - Wells Nineteen Eighty-Four - Orwell Fahrenheit 451 - Bradbury Brave New World - Huxley Snow Crash - Stephenson The Shockwave Rider - Brunner The Fountainhead - Rand Cryptonomicon - Stephenson The Foundation trilogy - Asimov Something Wicked This Way Comes - Bradbury Strangers - Koontz After Dark - Murakami It - King The Lord of the Rings - Tolkien The Hobbit - Tolkien Perdido Street Station - Miéville Permutation City - Egan Glasshouse - Stross NON-FICTION Report from Engine Co 82 - Smith Godel, Escher, Bach - Hofstadter How the Mind Works - Pinker The Four Steps to the Epiphany - Blank Charles Proteus Steinmetz: The Electrical Wizard of Schenectady - Bly Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution - Levy Artificial Life - Levy Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier - Haffner & Markoff (Note: this book is not without controvery. There is a lot of debate about the veracity of much of the material on Mitnick. However, it is a wildly entertaining read, and an introduction to a number of interesting characters. But I'd suggest following up by reading other related titles, especially regarding Kevin Mitnick) Ghost in the Wires - Mitnick (Mitnick's autogiography, basically) Takedown - Shimomura & Markoff The Fugitive Game - Littman (of the books written about Mitnick, but not by Mitnick, this one has a reputation for being a little more "pro Kevin" whereas a couple of the others are sort of pointedly "anti Kevin" in their bias. Maybe it all balances out in the end if you read them all). The Cyberthief & the Samurai - Goodell The Cuckoo's Egg - Stoll How To Create A Mind - Kurzweil On Intelligence - Hawkins Engineering General Intelligence (volumes 1 & 2) - Goertzel The Hidden Pattern - Goertzel Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity - Wallace |