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Ask HN: Good non-fiction books without filler?

24 points by branislav ↗ HN
As probably many of you, I notice my attention span being diminished by the usage of internet and social media.

I set a goal for myself to focus on reading more books and long-form articles, but I'm finding it harder to find those which don't spend a lot of words on filler. (as discussed in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17803873)

What are some books/authors which are straight to the point and the reader doesn't have to wade through pages of personal stories to illustrate a simple point?

17 comments

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tankmohit11
Read The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. It is available for free online. It's straight to the point. Each line of this book can be used as a quote.

Other books I found without filler is 48 laws of power. It is a also a good read.

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mpax
Laws of power is nice but what always bothered me about it is that there doesn’t seem to be a system to the laws, it merely sums up a bunch of them without investigating underlaying foundations.
unmole
I would actually suggest buying the Hays translation of Meditations instead of reading the free versions. The language in every other version is overly verbose and archaic.
kashyapc
Indeed, I agree. I'm ~70% through the translation by Gregory Hays. FWIW I've picked up this translation after some research; there are several of them. Hays' translation also as a nice reference on related reading in the book's introduction chapter.
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mpax
A Brief History of Time, by Hawking
jamestimmins
The Master Switch by Tim Wu. Absolutely phenomenal, and only more impressive because he covers > 100 years in communications tech in < 400 pages.
colangelod
The Victorian Internet By Tom Standage, solid read on the history and progression of communication tech up through the dropping of the transatlantic cable. To the point with lots of history I did not know before reading it.

Forever Young by John W. Young; haven't quite finished it yet but its great so far. He is perhaps one of the most prolific astronauts to have served at NASA and has lots of great stories.

Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions By Edwin A. Abbott; Its short but its a solid read (especially considering its age) great thought piece on multidimensional space.

jf26028
Im not affiliated, but I think www.blinkist.com is excellent. The summaries are very, very short, and if you like the message, you can buy the book. It has both audio and text as well.
m10n
Best-selling authors seem to be aware of this trend, because I keep coming across excellent but very, very short non-fiction books. Among those I can remember reading and would recommend, these are published in the past <5 years and are <150 pages (or <5 hour audiobook):

- Discrimination and Disparities By: Thomas Sowell

- A Colony in a Nation: Chris Hayes

- Between the World and Me: Ta-Nehisi Coates

(three very different takes on race relations in America)

- Astrophysics for People in a Hurry: Neil deGrasse Tyson

- Seven Brief Lessons on Physics: Carlo Rovelli

- When Breath Becomes Air: Paul Kalanithi

- On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century: Timothy Snyder

- Requiem for the American Dream: The Principles of Concentrated Wealth and Power: Noam Chomsky

- Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now: Jaron Lanier

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rubinelli
That's a big advantage of ebooks: a book that would have been padded to fit a certain length/size slot can now be the size that the subject requires, and no more.
paulcole
> When Breath Becomes Air: Paul Kalanithi

This one is closer to 250 pages and 5.5 hour audiobook. I wouldn't recommend it myself. Not much unexpected happens and it's kind of an inevitable slog to an unavoidable end.

To paraphrase Love Story: What can you say about a 38 year old guy who died?

combatentropy
The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E. B. White

The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker

The Problem of Pain by C. S. Lewis

cm2012
How to lie with statistics. Oldie but goodie, very short.
yesenadam
It sounds like maybe you would like the genre of aphorisms. By definition, there's no filler at all.

My favourites (which are also mostly those with the highest reputation, don't just take my word for it) are:

La Rochefoucauld's Maxims - scathing about your character and it's fabric of vanity and self-love. I find it very funny, for all the terrible things he's always saying about me. It was all polished in the 17th french salons to say the most with the fewest words.

La Bruyere - Characters - slightly longer average length, mostly less savage than La R, still he knows how to sink the boot into humanity, men, women. An example:

Children are haughty, disdainful, quick to anger, envious, curious, self-seeking, lazy, fickle, timid, intemperate, untruthful, secretive; they laugh and weep readily; the most trivial subjects give them immoderate delight or bitter distress; they wish not to be hurt, but they like hurting others: they are men already.

Didn't see that coming, did you. :-)

Lichtenberg - Aphorisms - He was a scientist, thinker, wondering about everything, questioning everything.

All these were favourites of Nietzsche, whose work contains a lot of aphorisms, although it's mostly written in self-contained paragraphs. (except Zarathustra and Untimely Essays)

Gracian's Art of Worldly Wisdom also is written in short paragraphs, and I'd say filler-free. It's a guide to living, maybe the best one I know.

There are a lot of wonderful aphorisms in Emerson, Boswell's Johnson, Kierkegaard, Oscar Wilde etc although I guess they "spend a lot of words on filler", but I thought I'd mention them.