Critical Path
By R. Buckminster Fuller

Published two years before Fuller's death, this book traces the origins of social, political, and economic systems. The chapter called "Legally Piggily" floored me. Fuller mentions how advertising is used in our culture. He gives one example of the auto industry: In the early 1940s, carmakers decided that it would be too expensive to retool their plants to make new automobiles after the war, so they hired Madison Avenue agencies to produce ads with GI soldiers saying, "Please keep everything the same at home until I return." It made me rethink the different factors that go into advertisements so that I'm not just walking blindly through life.