For me its probably the Tao Te Ching for its spiritual wisdom as well as the courage to be disliked for how it introduced me to Adlerian psychology and teleology.
Nature's Nether Regions. About weird sex stuff in the animal kingdom. Evolution winds up making some strange things like dragonfly vibrators and snail impregnation duels.
It's a tough choice, but if I had to choose it would be Betrayers of the Truth by William J. Broad and Nicholas Wade. The book deals with the problematic ways fraud is dealt with in the scientific community, namely as an exceptional phenomenon, a bad-apple type of analysis that unwittingly brushes off the structural issues of academia.
A honourable mention would be Silencing the Past by Michel-Rolph Trouillot which questions the layered process of producing history. The production of history is itself a product of history that should not be taken for granted. All of this is showcased through a quick overview of Haitian history.
"Tao: The Watercourse Way" by Alan Watts
"Walden" by Henry David Thoreau
"A Room of One's Own" by Virginia Woolf
"Dragons of Eden" by Carl Sagan and "Caffeine" by Michael Polan are some of my favorites for thought provoking biological and sociological tie-ins. I also recently wrapped up "Revolutionary Suicide" by Huey P. Newton and it was eye opening in how not only prophetic he was but how the same issues are still in play some 60 years later.
I really like nonfiction, so I'll recommend a few.
Wonderful Life (Stephen Jay Gould) was what really helped me understand biology. Really interesting read if you want to hear about evolution or paleontology. If you prefer land animals to Cambrian bugs, Rise and Fall of dinosaurs (Steve Brusatte) is also a great read, though it didn't blow my mind as much as Gould did.
House and Soul of a new Machine (both by Tracy Kidder) are op opposite ends of the technical spectrum but together form a rich portrait of people at work.
Exploding The Phone (Phil Lapsely) is the book you want if you're at all interested in retro technology. I suspect many people who care enough to use a ln offbeat social network like this one will enjoy it.
Annals of the former world (John McPhee) is a hefty tome that tells the natural history of United States geology, the history of geology (especially how plate tectonics were discovered) and how geology has interacted with the people living on it.
