Love your list, but wanted second Imagined Communities. I don't see it as much as the other's (frequent HN recommendations). Drags a bit, but is short and impactful. I especially thought its exploration of how _language_ influenced nation's was particularly enlightening. If you find the Selfish Gene to have powerful explanatory effect, I bet you will feel similarly about Imagined Communities.
> Basically, Gat is refuting a modernist view, which has arguably gone from being revisionist to normative, that the concept and execution of a nation is a historically contingent construction of early modern Europe, and more precisely Revolutionary France of the 1790s.
