Hmmm, I might have to go with the Five Books of Architecture, i'm forgetting who it's by but i'd recognize the name...and i'm too lazy to go to my bookshelf right now. :) I think one of the main attractions to it for me is its emphasis on interderisciplinary academic studies in regards to application within a field of work - in his case, architecture.

I am a big "fan" of Lucretius, too. One of the things that I'm interested in is tracing the influence that Epicureanism (especially by way of Lucretius) had on freethinkers and other troublemakers during the Middle Ages and on into the Early Modern era.

Dante put Epicurus in the Sixth Ring of Hell - reserved for heretics. He has some interesting company there, especially Frederick II, who was a "Holy Roman Emperor" who tried to oppose the growing power of the pope, and who was also a great patron of the arts, literature, philosophy and classicism (centuries before the Renaissance).

Also the Epicureans were big on the idea of "prolepsis", basically commonly held ideas that contain, or lead to, profound truths. As in "we hold these truths to be self-evident....."