5 Books That Transformed My Worldview
Books have been a crucial part of my life from a young age. My parents encouraged me to read early and often. From my Dad reading to me before bed, to my Mom constantly gifting me books, I was fortunate to grow up in an environment that prized learning and education.
Many people have their favorite book lists. Others have recommended reading lists for specific genres, stages of life, or career pursuits. But I have never come across a transformative list — a list of books that influenced the reader so much that they were transformed by the end of it.
Have you ever read a book where you feel like a new person once you’ve finished? Where you suddenly see the world differently and continue to think about what you read weeks, months, or even years later?
That’s the type of transformation I’m talking about in the list below of the 5 books that transformed my worldview. They may not have the same impact on you, and in that case my message is simple — keep reading.
We all have different interests, priorities, life circumstances, and challenges. But I truly believe that books can serve as medicine in life. As I learned after reading The Little Paris Bookshop, “[I]t was a common misconception that booksellers looked after books. They look after people.”
Please allow me to play the role of “bookseller” here.
1. The Brains Benton Series by George Wyatt
I am cheating a little by including an entire series of 6 books that date back to the 1950s and 60s, but it’s hard to pick just one. My Dad owned and read the third book, The Case of the Stolen Dummy, when he was a boy. This was my initiation to Brains Benton, someone who I often think about decades after first meeting him.
Brains Benton and his sidekick Jimmy Carson are young boys who love to solve mysteries. They are detectives. Brains uses science, technology, and math to solve crimes while Jimmy is far more average and ordinary, but incredibly persistent. He never gives up on a case.
I was always more like Jimmy, but admired Brains for his methodical approach. The two of them make a perfect team. They are similar to the other more famous young sleuths, The Hardy Boys.
But Brains and Jimmy always resonated with me far more. Their unique combination of brains and wit, and creativity and grit, made them formidable to any criminals they encountered.
The books are packed with adventure and excitement through many twists and turns. They were the first books I couldn’t put down and that I wanted to read again and again. Brains Benton transformed my worldview by helping me discover the beauty of books and the joy of reading as a young boy. This series laid the foundation for my love of reading today.
And fun fact: my Dad purchased the other 5 books in the mid-to-late 1990s and gifted them to me on various holidays and special occasions. They were his first purchases on the internet through a little known website at the time called eBay.
Now that my Dad is gone, the Brains Benton series occupies an even more prominent space on my home library bookshelf. The books are constant reminders that reading should be fun and filled with childhood wonderment.
2. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Another prominent book that rocked my world, this time as a young teenager, was Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. My uncle had recommended it during a family vacation when we started talking about philosophy and politics. When I read the first few pages my previously stable world felt unsteady.
Brave New World envisions an advanced technological future where society has a caste-like structure, with Alphas at the top of the social hierarchy and Epsilons at the bottom. There’s no room for social mobility and everyone is taught to love their stations in life through a combination of state-enforced hypnosis and drugs (“soma”).
As a young person who had just started learning about authoritarianism and the uglier parts of human history, this book rocked my safe democratic world. I could not fathom why Epsilons, for example, were accepting of their lower role in society and grateful they didn’t have the intellectual burden of Alphas.
Brave New World opened my eyes to the corrupting influence that society can have. How it can unduly influence people and manipulate their thinking. How this can even happen in democracies, which I had previously assumed at a naively young age were always stable.
No wonder it is one of the most banned books of all time. Even democracies don’t like too much questioning of their authority. So Brave New World gave me a new rule — if a book is continuously banned, I will prioritize reading it.
3. 1984 by George Orwell
Brave New World is often compared to this one. I read 1984 for the first time shortly after the November 2016 U.S. election. Everyone was raving about it, warning that Orwell’s predictions were coming true in America, albeit a few decades late.
While Brave New World focuses on the structures of the authoritarian state and the internal conflict between happiness and freedom, 1984 hones in on the truth; how a world state can manipulate the truth and facts to serve their ends. How they can make citizens believe that 2+2 = 5.
This book is about a dictatorial leader, likely modeled on Joseph Stalin, who is supported by a cult of personality. “Thought Police” protect society through “doublespeak” and “big brother” oversight, just some of the mainstream terminology derived from this book.
Like Brave New World, 1984 reinforced the fragility of democracy. It illustrated how an entire society can easily fall prey to corrupting state influences and how easy it is for smart people to believe objectively false information. It warned that we are only a few steps away from totalitarianism with each loss of checks and balances, increased executive power, and the erosion of separated governmental powers like an independent judiciary.
1984 transformed my thinking to believe that freedom is never guaranteed.
4. A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn
This book transitions well from 1984 because the main character in Orwell’s novel, Winston Smith, was part of a revisionist history department. Thankfully, there is nothing revisionist about Howard Zinn’s masterpiece, A People’s History of the United States.
As I mentioned in my video, the first I heard of this book was from the classic movie, Good Will Hunting. When Matt Damon’s character dropped this reference as a book that will “knock you on your ass”, I knew I had to look it up.
It knocked me on my ass. I was in high school and had learned years of U.S. history by that point. But I went to school at a time when it was still standard to teach things like “Columbus was not all that bad.” The darker parts of American history were largely glossed over.
Not in Zinn’s book. It’s the first history book I ever read that takes the people’s perspective. Many history books are written by the winners or from the perspective of the powerful. Zinn takes the perspective of the people, from 1492 through about 2003, describing how everyone from Native Americans and the colonists in the American Revolution, to the African Americans fighting for their freedom and civil liberties, had to make major sacrifices in the name of progress.
The context that Zinn provided for American history transformed the way I viewed my home country. It frankly pissed me off that I had received such a sanitized version of U.S. history throughout my early education.
I will temper this by saying, however, that Zinn’s perspective on U.S. history should not be read in isolation. He’s far more pro-labor and anti-capitalist than other historians, but his viewpoint is important because it was very underrepresented when he published the first edition of this book in the 1980s.
What Howard Zinn did convince me of though is that despite all of our challenges and setbacks in America, the arc of justice still points toward the good. The American project may be messy and filled with pitfalls and potholes, but eventually the road gets paved, with the people doing the paving.
A People’s History of the United States made me believe in my fellow Americans. Although that view continues to be challenged to this day.
5. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
This book completely changed by views on capitalism. It’s probably the most transformative book on this list for me, which is why I saved it for last.
While I was struggling to find a job after graduating law school in 2013, I picked up this book. It had always been on my list and my recreational reading had suffered over the course of three years of law school and an entire summer devoted to studying for the bar exam.
Prior to reading the book I had been a free market evangelist in the mold of Milton Friedman. Then I saw the world through the eyes of Jurgis Rudkis, the protagonist in The Jungle, and I was horrified. The picture Upton Sinclair paints of 19th century America in the Chicago stockyards is like the Hobbesian state of nature — “nasty, brutish, and short.”
When workers weren’t suffering from workplace injuries or brutal conditions at, for example, meatpacking and fertilizer plants, they were being cheated by the corporate overlords who owned and operated the company towns where they lived.
It was a period in U.S. history of laissez faire economics, or capitalism with practically unchecked corporate power. Foods were adulterated and handled in unsafe ways while immigrant workers (many from Eastern Europe) like Jurgis were taken advantage of in dangerous working conditions.
The Jungle blew my mind as much as it did the American public at the turn of the 20th century when it was originally published. No wonder we can trace a direct line to the creation of the Food and Drug Administration, other administrative agencies like the National Labor Relations Board, and the labor union movement, all stemming from this book.
Upton Sinclair proved that the pen is mightier than the sword with The Jungle. He showed how one book or piece of art can influence society to progress and change for the better.
The Jungle has forever changed my view on capitalism and regulation. Its gruesome depiction of unchecked corporate power should be a reminder to all of us that while capitalism has unlocked unprecedented levels of human progress and innovation, it has a dark side that must be controlled.
Read books that challenge your worldview
While the books on this list may not transform your worldview in the same way they did for me, it’s important to read books that challenge you. It’s too easy for many of us in the modern era to retreat to our echo chambers where it’s safe and reaffirming. But unless we force ourselves to think critically, we’ll never develop a comprehensive and nuanced view of the world that’s closer to reality and truth.
If we don’t challenge ourselves, we are more prone to believing that 2+2 = 5 or that it’s sensible to divide society between winners (Alphas) and losers (Epsilons). We may even miss the books that show us how joyful reading can be, as the Brains Benton series demonstrated for me.
So keep reading. Keep searching for books that challenge your worldview. And I’m confident that you too will find the perfect literary medicine to transform your life.
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