I like to read what people tell me, obliquely or not, to not read. Here are some of the deeply uncomfortable, yet edifying reads:

Technological Slavery: The Collected Writings of Theodore J. Kaczynski, a.k.a. "The Unabomber" -- A Harvard-educated mathematician terrorist presents a lucid neo-Luddite manifesto. It doesn't take a cool-headed logician to appreciate this work. Draws heavily from the works of Jacques Ellul, but presents Ellul's ideas in a quintessentially American manner, without the obfuscation required of French philosophy. Yes, he's a convicted murderer, yes, he was a subject of MKULTRA, but even so, the perspective of a Harvard-educated psychedelic terrorist should alone be worthy of a lookover (he doesn't receive any proceeds from sales). If you prefer French philosophy or a pacifistic author, replace this with The Technological Society and Propaganda: the Formation of Men's Attitudes, both by Jacques Ellul, tackling the same subjects (mostly).

Management of Savagery: The Most Critical Stage Through Which the Islamic Nation Will Pass by Abu Bakr Naji -- This is the playbook that was used for establishing the Islamic State. Its philosophy isn't unique to Wahhabist Islam, however. It's like the anti-Embrace-Extend-Extinguish philosophy. It's disruptive innovation for religion. In short, it has three stages: first, destroy the social contract and return to a Hobbesian state of nature. Second, reestablish the social contract with your team in control. Third, use this island of order to expand outwards until your goal is reached (in this case an Islamic Caliphate).

Suicide Note by Mitchell Heismann -- Mitchell Heisman shot himself on September 18, 2010 in Harvard Yard as ”Experimental Elimination of Self-Preservation,” according to this work that he published posthumously. Possibly, along with Kaczysnki, the best illustrator of G.K. Chesterton's assertion that "Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess players do. [...] The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason." This is his, nominally rational, defense of suicide against what Heismann terms viviocentrism. It is an experience, if nothing else.

Two picks that dovetail together exceptionally well and equally magisterial in their respective wheel-houses:

First, the Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist -- Why is the brain divided? What if modern consciousness as we know it only emerged during the Axial Age? The differing world views of the right and left brain (the "Master" and "Emissary" in the title, respectively) have, according to the author, shaped Western culture since the time of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, and the growing conflict between these views has implications for the way the modern world is changing. The first half is pure neuroscience, the latter half teased-out implications of the former. It is a brilliant work.

Second, Debt: the First 5000 Years by the late David Graeber -- What is the historical relationship of debt with social institutions such as barter, marriage, friendship, slavery, law, religion, war and government? Why do we keep debts fuzzy with friends, but settle them immediately with strangers? What exactly is money?

I imagine that the processes noticed by both McGilchrist and Graeber are interrelated in profound ways (i.e. the dual advent of physical currencies and complex civilizations incentivized profound shifts in cognition, arguably in favor of disembodied abstraction and decontextualization, creating in its wake what is termed "mental illness").

And why not? A final choice: The Kingdom of God Is Within You by Leo Tolstoy -- "The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him." When Jesus says to turn the other cheek, Tolstoy asserts that he meant to abolish violence, period. A favorite quote: "The attitude of the ruling classes to the laborers is that of a man who has felled his adversary to the earth and holds him down, not so much because he wants to hold him down, as because he knows that if he let him go, even for a second, he would himself be stabbed, for his adversary is infuriated and has a knife in his hand. And therefore, whether their conscience is tender or the reverse, our rich men cannot enjoy the wealth they have filched from the poor as the ancients did who believed in their right to it. Their whole life and all their enjoyments are embittered either by the stings of conscience or by terror."