Required Reading
If you had the power to make two books required reading for every adult american which books would you choose and why?
It's a pretty open ended question and the crux of it is which two books do you think would most benefit socity if they were widely read. Everyone will read it so it's important to pick a book that's accessible to most people (imbeciles can be excluded)
I don't know if this is my final answer but my first thought is
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
Some other ideas to get you started:
Political Books
Animal Farm or 1984 by George Orwell
Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest For Dominance by Noam Chomsky
The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton et al
Grammar books
Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss
The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White
Science books
The Feynman Lectures on Physics
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
The Origin of Speces by Charles Darwin
On Human Nature by Edward O. Wilson
Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert
Mathematics Books
Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter
Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott
Books on Religion
The Koran
The Bible
The End of Faith by Sam Harris
I'm weak on books on history and art so I'm sure there are worthy ones that I'm just not listing. Same goes for works of literature. I'm more familiar with those but can't usually distinguish between the good and the great.
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