Life is too short to read bad books.

I am part of a generation in which all my peers are tired of hearing their parents telling them to read books. Some of them even stop reading books completely as a reaction.

For a period in the whole world reading was a guaranteed area of interest for people who wanted to improve themselves, learn about life and humanity, enlarge their imagination and open up their horizons. This is especially true for the generation that was born between 1900-70. Before the 1900’s, the hardship of acquiring books in different topics and with different content stood on the way of reading a lot. In this sense, I think the generation born between 1900-70 lived the golden age of reading books.

Today, as a part of a generation born after 1970’s, the place of reading a book has changed in our lives. This is due to the enrichment and spreading of different technologies and media competing with the book as a medium (much more superior in some senses).

The change has two main dimensions.

The first big change is that it is now possible to meet some of the needs that books would meet with learning platforms like Podcasts, YouTube videos, CoursEra or Udemy. And we shouldn’t forget the revolutionary Audiobook industry. So frequency of book-reading, contents of the books being read and the way people read books daily are all changing.

The second big change is that there are guessingly 130 Million so far books in the world. And a majority of these are accessible. This also means rising of the number of books and decreasing of quality. In the past the process of printing a book was subject to the approval of many editors and quality standards. But now roughly 500 books are released every year through self-publishing via platforms like Kindle.

This is why it became much more important to know on which books to spend our valuable and limited time of book-reading.

So without further ado I will share the books that one needs to read in his lifetime and that will enable a better understanding for the history of the world and humanity:

• A World History by Williem McNeil
• How Man Became a Giant? by M. Ilin & Elena Segal
• The Age of Empire – The Age of Revolution – The Age of Capital by Eric J. Hobsbawn
• A New Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations – World History: A New Perspective by Clive Ponting
• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harrari
• A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage
• The Story of Art by E.H. Gombrich
• A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright
• The Theory of Democracy Revisited by Giovanni Sartori
• A Brief History of Mankind by Cyril Aydon

Please communicate all your additions and comments. Don’t forget to share with friends who would find this interesting.

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