Tyler Cowen led the way by listing the ten books that influenced his worldview most strongly. Then co-bloggers Arnold and Bryan followed. Here are my seventeen, not in order of importance, but in chronological order (the chronology being, of course, when I read them.)
1. I can’t remember the name. I read it when I was home sick at about age 12. It was a book on Lincoln that leads off each chapter with a quote from the book-length poem, John Brown’s Body, by Stephen Vincent Benet. That’s when I became a Lincoln fan. I’m no longer a fan of his politics, given what I’ve learned since, but I loved his persistence. My favorite quote is this one and I took it to heart and made it part of who I’ve become:
“No-he ain’t much on looks-or much on speed-
A young dog can outrun him any time,
Outlook him and outeat him and outleap him,
But, Mister, that dog’s hell on a cold scent
And, once he gets his teeth in what he’s after,
He don’t let go until he knows he’s dead.”
2. Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen. We covered it in high school, but I read it three times because I loved it so much. I still have to be reminded of the lesson: don’t make quick judgments but, instead, get more information when that is low cost.
3. Yes, I Can, by Sammy Davis, Jr. I read this during the summer between high school and college. The way he ran his career and the way he dealt with racial discrimination was inspiring.
4. Elmer Gantry, by Sinclair Lewis. My aunt, who was more evangelical than the minister she was married to, convinced me that I would burn in hell if I didn’t become born again. I kept trying to be born again and I kept failing at it. When I read this book the same summer as #3 above, I relaxed.
5. The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand. I read it in my third month of college. If I hadn’t done so, I’m not sure I’d be a libertarian, an economist, or an American. It, and Ayn Rand generally, influenced a huge number of the choices I made, most very good, one very bad that is too personal to talk about.
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. I loved the way Atticus kept his principles while still dealing in an every day world that he didn’t create. This helped me work in jobs where Howard Roark would have had trouble. I reread this book every decade.
7. The Virtue of Selfishness, by Ayn Rand. This book, more than any other, convinced me that you could actually think about many issues and often resolve them or at least narrow them down. My favorite was her essay on racism as a crude form of collectivism.
8. Capitalism and Freedom, by Milton Friedman. Besides learning a lot of economics and some history from this book, I also learned that one can be relatively radical and successful in the mainstream.
9. The Road to Serfdom, by Friedrich Hayek. A friend gave this to me for my 18th birthday. When I started to read it, I hated it. I couldn’t stand the fact that Hayek treated his intellectual foes with respect rather than attacking them. He kept pulling his punches. When I picked it up to read about 6 months later, I loved it. Not only did I learn his explicit message, but also I learned a style of debate that I still practice: zeroing in on the issue and assuming good intentions of the “other side.”
10. The Calculus of Consent, by James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock. I read this during the year I took off to study economics on my own. My introduction to public choice. I wrote separate fan letters (at age 20) to Buchanan and Tullock. Both answered gracefully and with actual content.
11. The Theory of Price, by George Stigler. I read this during that same econ study year. I loved the mix of theorizing and more-than-casual empiricism. After Stigler died, I reread the whole book and realized just how much of what I thought I came up with to use in class, I had learned from Stigler.
12. University Economics, by Armen Alchian and William R. Allen. I TAed from this book my first year in graduate school at UCLA. Every Sunday afternoon and evening, I would work my way through a chapter and through every single question at the back of each chapter. I did so just in case some 18-year-old the next day in my TA section asked a question from the back of the chapter. It never happened. But I learned more from this book my first year at UCLA than from any other.
13. A Guide to Rational Living, by Albert Ellis. I hit some bumps in my last year in the Ph.D. program at UCLA. I got extreme writer’s block and was getting nowhere on my dissertation. I write about this in Making Great Decisions in Business and Life, co-authored with Charley Hooper. I went to see a therapist, Roger Callahan, who gave every one of his new patients a copy. That one book has helped me deal with so many life situations.
14. Lucky Jim, by Kingsley Amis. This fun book helps me not take academic bulls**t too seriously. I reread it every decade.
15. How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World, by Harry Browne. When I was visiting a friend in Australia in 1999, I found this book in his library and decided to reread it. I had first read it the late 1970s. I had the same kind of experience I’d had when rereading Stigler: I realized that I had used a whole lot of Browne’s ideas in my life but had thought I had come up with them.
16. The Autobiography of Malcolm X, by Malcolm X and Alex Haley. I loved the story of Malcolm X’s struggle and how he turned away from a life of crime and became a very strong man.
17. The Ropes to Skip and the Ropes to Know, by Richard Ritti and G. Ray Funkhouser. I learned more about how to survive and thrive in organizations from this book than from anything else in my life. I read it when I started the job at the Council of Economic Advisers and it helped immensely. Moreover, I could see how I had screwed up at the Cato Institute in 1979-80 by not having followed these lessons.
READER COMMENTS
Shane
Mar 18 2010 at 1:32pm
Great list! You would do well to link these books to amazon and get the commissions for it. I would be happy to use that as a way to pay you back for all your blogging!
Andrew
Mar 18 2010 at 6:09pm
I can never understand when I see TKaMB on these types of list. The book was like a bad after school-special TV show.
scott clark
Mar 19 2010 at 9:21am
There sounds like there is a good story to be had in hearing how you screwed up at the Cato Institute in 1970-80.
Mark Bahner
Mar 22 2010 at 12:00pm
My lunchtime list of 5 of 10:
1) Farmer in the Sky, by Robert Heinlein. I’m an environmental engineer, and a fair amount of that is based on Farmer in the Sky.
2) The Door into Summer, by Robert Heinlein. I used to be a mechanical engineer, and a part of that was based on The Door into Summer.
3) Rabble in Arms (and other books), by Kenneth Roberts. Brings out the good points about Benedict Arnold. This, along with Mr. Harris in History, helped me realize that history isn’t just “good guys” versus “bad guys.”
4) Ultimate Resource 2, by Julian Simon. I already knew that the world was likely to get better, not worse. But this book solidified my opinion.
5) The Age of Spiritual Machines, Ray Kurzweil. Made me much more aware of the implications of exponential growth, and much more aware of the many industries in which exponential growth is happening (e.g. computer microprocessors, hard drives, DNA sequencing, etc.). (Note: Reading this book led me to predict that 99+% of economists underpredict likely economic growth in the 21st century.)
Mark Bahner
Mar 22 2010 at 10:03pm
The other five (not necessarily the bottom 5):
6) The Sneetches and Other Stories, Dr. Seuss. The Sneetches, the Zaks, the Pants With No One Inside (aka, “What Was I Scared Of?”). C’mon! I can’t believe no one learned some of life’s most important lessons from Dr. Seuss! But I guess my father read that to me, so maybe it doesn’t count.
7) You Will Go to the Moon, Mae and Ira Freeman. I still remember most of the details of that book, though it was probably one of the first 10 books I ever read. The only thing I don’t remember from it was Sarah Michelle Gellar (and even then, I would have remembered her! ;-)):
Images from You Will Go to the Moon
8) Starting Pitcher, Duane Decker. Had a part in making me the ballplayer I am today. Never quit. Never surrender.
9) How to Lie With Statistics, Darrel Huff. (I’d have to see the book again to make sure it was that book, but I remember reading *a* book that showed how truncated graphs and other routine dishonesties can fool a person.)
10) So You Think You Know Baseball, Harry Simmons. Started a lifetime interest in trivial facts.
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