1984

Richard Branson Founder/Virgin GroupToday is World Book Day, a wonderful opportunity to address this #ChallengeRichard sent in by Mike Gonzalez of New Jersey: Make a list of your top 65 books to read in a lifetime. (Source)

Steve Jobs Founder/Applecalled this book "one of his favorite" and recommended it to the hires. The book also inspired one the greatest TV ad (made by Jobs) (Source)

Emma Watson Recommends this book

Matt Mullenweg Founder & CEO/AutomatticRecommends this book

Chan Koonchung Nineteen Eighty-Four is seriously read in China by intellectuals, who see similarities between the world of George Orwell and present-day China. (Source)

Robert Service The book looks at how order and disorder co-habit. Orwell, without ever having gone to the USSR, understood it from the outside brilliantly. (Source)

Chris Abbott Orwellian has come to mean the kind of surveillance state we live in today, with all the CCTV. It’s not a prophetic book but it’s a warning. (Source)

Tristan Harris Recommends this book

Roxana Bitoleanu [One of the books that had the biggest impact on ] 1984, the future we are living today envisioned way back. (Source)

Ella Botting This book marked a fundamental shift in my mental model and the way I process and consider things. This book taught to never take things at face value and to always challenge information that is presented to me, both of these skills make me a better researcher. It taught me to be empathetic and was a stark reminder that things aren’t always what they seem, on a personal and on a macro level. Considering it’s eerie similarities to the society we now live in, it also taught me to be cautious of systems of governance but not in an over-the-top conspiracy theory way. [...] This book enabled me to... (Source)

Igor Debatur Question: What five books would you recommend to young people interested in your career path & why? Answer: The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco The Antichrist by Friedrich Nietzsche The Castle by Franz Kafka 1984 by George Orwell and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (Source)

Santiago Basulto And non-business is even harder, but I’d probably choose 1984; its power and narrative are just amazing. (Source)

Stephane Grand Everybody, whether they decide to spend their lives in a police state or not, needs to read 1984. It is a book about moral choices, being different, and being broken. (Source)

Sol Orwell Question: What books had the biggest impact on you? Perhaps changed the way you see things or dramatically changed your career path. Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984 (though Huxley's Brave New World is a better reflection of today's society). (Source)

Andra Zaharia These books and their core ideas have stuck with me the most and continue to guide me when I hit crossroads along the way. (Source)

Juan Mendez It alerts us to the danger of unfettered state power, which under any circumstance always ends up committing violations against individuals. (Source)

Jordan Peterson [Jordan Peterson recommended this book on his website.] (Source)

P J O’Rourke It’s eerily predictive of the sort of video camera surveillance world that we now live in. It would be interesting to update 1984 and make all of the things that Orwell foresaw more annoying than dangerous. (Source)

D J Taylor In terms of how technology is working in our modern surveillance powers, it’s a terrifyingly prophetic book in some of its implications for 21st-century human life. Orwell would deny that it was prophecy; he said it was a warning. But in fact, distinguished Orwell scholar Professor Peter Davis once made a list of all the things that Orwell got right, and it was a couple of fairly long paragraphs, and it was really rather terrifying. (Source)