One of my favourite books is Marshall Berman's All that is Solid Melts into Air, an attempt to examine the whirlwind experience of modernity, through a delirious blend of philosophy, history, literature, architecture and autobiography. It is a deeply personal and intensely felt book, and completely unlike anything else I've ever read.
The humanities and social sciences have become leaden under professionalisation. There is a paucity of vision and imagination, a reluctance to look beyond the horizon of one's own subdiscipline, and a failure to ask big and novel questions. Yet those are everyone's favourite books, that mean most to them, and change not just their arguments but their worldview.