Okay at the risk of being offensive, all the comments before mine are made by overly intellectual fools.
I'm not usually so insulting--but as a father of two, if my 3 year old and 1.5 year old could only read one book, it would have to be "Oh, the places you'll go" by Dr. Suess.
Sorry to stomp on Das Kapital and its ilk, but if you get only one book, I can't imagine a better first message to convey than the endless possibilities inherent in each of us.
The world is your oyster! Even if you're old and have wasted most of what you were given. Especially today, in some of the most amazing times that have ever existed (even if you didn't draw the long straw). Today is SO much better than most of history.
It sounds like you have read the question as "if a person could only read a single book in their whole life, what should it be?"
But I think the question actually meant: "for actual real life people here on HN, who have all probably read some books already, what extra book would you suggest reading?"
For us adults, there are probably books that would have more value than Dr Zeuss, excellent though it may be.
I agree kids should be read books that open their minds, that are written for the young mind.
For international audiences I would perhaps suggest books with a large number of translated languages as kids usually prefer to be read in a language they speak. One such "universal" book could be "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. For me it's magical at every age you read it.
At least in my native language (Finnish) Seuss is completely untranslated.
Hence in general, for this topic, "english books for adults" is maybe the safer categorization as I presume the intended audience is happy reading text in english, even though their kids don't speak english.
What’s amazing about Dr. Suess is how much creativity and fun he packs into a very simply written book. Most children’s books are so asinine. “Sally went to the farm. She saw a pig. Sally can drive a tractor. Etc. etc.” There is rarely a point to the book. Dr. Suess uses similarly simple language: “You can think about red. You can think about pink.” While simple, the underlying message is usually profound, and that makes it so much more interesting.
I'm not usually so insulting--but as a father of two, if my 3 year old and 1.5 year old could only read one book, it would have to be "Oh, the places you'll go" by Dr. Suess.
Sorry to stomp on Das Kapital and its ilk, but if you get only one book, I can't imagine a better first message to convey than the endless possibilities inherent in each of us.
The world is your oyster! Even if you're old and have wasted most of what you were given. Especially today, in some of the most amazing times that have ever existed (even if you didn't draw the long straw). Today is SO much better than most of history.