Social philosophy/psychology, or cultural anthropology, is mind-bending to me.
Erich Fromm's The Sane Society - on how society impacts people's mental health, and how to build towards a sane society
Fromm's The Art Of Loving - an analysis of different kinds of loves, trying to dispel pop culture's lies about love, and love is actually hard work
Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death - on how not our fear, but our complete denial of death existing leads to the weirdest outcomes in our society
Then there's political stuff -
Orwell's Essays, any large-ish collection. I find Orwell to be a much, much better non-fiction writer than fiction writer. Extremely insightful into political processes.
Robert Caro's books, perhaps the first The Years Of Lyndon B Johnson. Can't get better insights into how power works on a local and not-so-local level.
Popper's Open Society and its enemies, hard to summarise - a defense of Western society in light of the then-ongoing WW2. You probably saw the paradox of tolerance a few times pop up, that's from that book, among a ton of other stuff.
Erich Fromm's The Sane Society - on how society impacts people's mental health, and how to build towards a sane society
Fromm's The Art Of Loving - an analysis of different kinds of loves, trying to dispel pop culture's lies about love, and love is actually hard work
Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death - on how not our fear, but our complete denial of death existing leads to the weirdest outcomes in our society
Then there's political stuff -
Orwell's Essays, any large-ish collection. I find Orwell to be a much, much better non-fiction writer than fiction writer. Extremely insightful into political processes.
Robert Caro's books, perhaps the first The Years Of Lyndon B Johnson. Can't get better insights into how power works on a local and not-so-local level.
Popper's Open Society and its enemies, hard to summarise - a defense of Western society in light of the then-ongoing WW2. You probably saw the paradox of tolerance a few times pop up, that's from that book, among a ton of other stuff.