
Ask HN: What, in your opinion, are the greatest and most useful textbooks? - Alekhine
For self-education from books, textbooks are essential. They are literally designed to convey information on a subject to students. But there are a lot of textbooks. Which ones are the best?<p>Preliminary research has suggested Spivak is best for Calculus. SICP is another famous one I&#x27;ve heard of. What about Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Anatomy, History?<p>Any contributions to this list are much appreciated.
======
MrsPeaches
The Art of Electronics taught me most of what I know about electronics.

It has informal and approachable style and even has a companion study book
full of experiments. [1]

One of my favourites from my university days was also Introduction to Heat and
Mass Transfer. [2]

Universe is a great introduction to Astronomy [3]

Wind Energy Handbook is also a comprehensive introduction to... well I think
you can guess. [4]

[1]
[https://learningtheartofelectronics.com/](https://learningtheartofelectronics.com/)

[2] [https://www.abebooks.co.uk/9780471457282/Fundamentals-
Heat-M...](https://www.abebooks.co.uk/9780471457282/Fundamentals-Heat-Mass-
Transfer-Incropera-0471457280/plp)

[3]
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/705558.Universe](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/705558.Universe)

[4]
[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/97811199927...](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781119992714)

~~~
aj7
I learned more about electronics by hacking LTSpice, reading Jim Williams and
Bob Pease, than from textbooks.

~~~
tarsinge
Interesting, could you provide some links to what to read from them?

~~~
aj7
1\. Get Williams books. I think there are two. 2\. Figure out a way to get
Pease’s columns from Electronics Design archives. 3\. Download all the old
Linear Technology App Notes while they are still available from Analog
Devices. 4\. TI has great app notes too, and software. 5\. Learn LTSpice,
perhaps the best engineering freeware ever.

------
doneata
You might be also interested in checking the post "The Best Textbooks on Every
Subject" from LessWrong:
[https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xg3hXCYQPJkwHyik2/the-
best-t...](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xg3hXCYQPJkwHyik2/the-best-
textbooks-on-every-subject) For each topic they look at at least three
alternatives and provide a brief argument for their recommendation.

------
magnio
Everyone's gonna inundate you with their 20 favorite textbooks when you have
such a general question.

For me, books for self-studying should have a slightly informal tone and
ramble a little. The book is your teacher, and I'd like my teacher to speak to
me as a student, not a theorem prover, as least when I'm starting. Spivak,
Pugh and Axler are some good examples, while I could only grok Rudin after
learning all the basic.

Not a lot of experience with physics but I like Symon's Classical Mechanics
and Purcell for the same reason. Kleppner's mechanics book has very good
exercises too.

~~~
gisborne
Spivak’s Calculus is the best-written textbook I’ve ever encountered and one
of the more beautiful examples of book design also.

~~~
karma_fountain
I like Spivak's Calculus but I think it's a lot of effort to learn Calculus
from (probably very rewarding though). I've currently been studying from Real
Analysis 1 by Terrance Tao and I find the explanations to be great,
[https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811017896](https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811017896).

------
fgimenez
\- Norvig's AI: Doesn't have much deep learning, but you get through it and
understand the expansiveness of the field.

\- Algorithms - Papadimitrou and Vazirani: I had a professor who described
this as a poetry book about algorithms. Alternative is Sipser

\- An Introduction to Statistical Learning: This is like a diet form of
Elements of Statistical Learning which is much more approachable and
pragmatic.

\- Janeway's Immunobiology - De facto standard of immunology. Great.

\- SICP: duh

\- Principles of Data Integration: This is more because the subject matter is
so important and nobody really has studied fundamentals. Did you know general
data integration is AI-complete? If 99% of work in AI was spent on data
integration, the field would move so much faster.

~~~
konz
Assuming you are referring to Russell & Norvig's Artificial Intelligence: A
Modern Approach, a 4th Edition was just released, including chapters about
deep learning. With contributions from amongst others: Ian Goodfellow about
Deep Learning and Judea Pearl about Causal Networks (see
[http://aima.cs.berkeley.edu/ack.html](http://aima.cs.berkeley.edu/ack.html))

[http://aima.cs.berkeley.edu](http://aima.cs.berkeley.edu)

[https://www.pearson.com/us/higher-
education/program/Russell-...](https://www.pearson.com/us/higher-
education/program/Russell-Artificial-Intelligence-A-Modern-Approach-4th-
Edition/PGM1263338.html)

------
fsloth
On History: Not textbooks, but if you want an enticing read to relatively
recent times, I suggest biographies.

Ron Chernov: Alexander Hamilton. An excellent introduction to the birth of US.
As a european US history is not that well covered in our school. There's also
_the_ musical version by Lin Manuel Miranda which alone is worth a few books
of education alone.

On the birth of modern india: Herman: Gandhi & Churchill: The Epic Rivalry
that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age

On the roman world: Julius Caesar: Gallic wars. This is a surprisingly
readable book given that it's a propaganda piece written two thousands years
ago. Highly recommended as it gives insight to just how organized-yet-cruel
the ancient world was.

General history:

Acemoglu: Why nations fail. This is a must read. It attempts to explain (with
great success) how institutions have molded the modern states into the way
they are now, and what exactly seems to be at the root of inequality and
prosperity.

If I had to recommend two books, "Why nations fail" would always be one on
that list.

~~~
venmul
Glimpses of World History, a book published by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1934, is a
panoramic sweep of the history of humankind. A People's History of the World:
From the Stone Age to the New Millennium

------
supernova87a
Edward Tufte's books, "Envisioning Information" and "The Visual Display of
Quantitative Information".

Why suggest these books that seem just about graphic design, to an audience of
mainly software developers? Well, aside from the stylistic points about
graphical plots and figures, it is more deeply about being able to communicate
effectively, with intention.

I find that all too commonly, many junior people who code are unable (or maybe
more charitably, unpracticed) at formulating arguments or explanations for why
something exists in the form it does, or how it ought to be designed, in a way
that they can coherently explain to someone not deep in their code. It usually
means that they have not spent time thinking about it deeply, and are stuck in
the "show me lines of code to explain what something is" mode of thinking. Or
that they can only explain the approach in terms of the specific lines they
are writing -- they have not moved beyond that level of understanding.

I won't say it to the person generally, but I really have to bite my tongue
when working with someone who has no way of explaining something (at an
overall approach level) other than showing me lines of code. Stepping out of
that realm into graphical communication is one way.

Being able to think graphically in a coherent way as a software developer
means you start to think about how to explain your work to others as more than
lines of code -- and in explaining to others, improving your own understanding
of what you're writing. Btw, it also probably means that you're more likely
move beyond the role of just a plain old software developer and become someone
responsible for the design of systems, the direction of work.

------
axegon_
For whatever reason people are often tempted to victimize themselves and
assume that everyone has it better than them. Which is an incredibly slippery
and dangerous slope(looking at the news over the last few years). And with
that in mind, "Factfulness" by Hans Rosling is a __MUST__ imo. Once you wrap
your head around the facts, a next good choice is "The Black Swan" and
"Antifragile" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, despite some (to a certain extent
justified) bashing on tech people. Note to self: need to pick up "Skin in the
Game".

Completely with you about Spivak, as far as calculus goes.

Physics: recently picked up Walter Lewin's "For the Love of Physics" and it's
a masterpiece. Didn't get the chance to finish it because of the pandemic and
it got locked in the office but it appears he's managed to cram in an entire
university course in one book.

Biology and anatomy - "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins is brilliant entry
point for people with limited knowledge on the subject.

Chemistry - no idea, that's the one subject which I hated with a passion since
I was a child. Very paradoxical, given that physics was arguably my favorite
subject ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯...

History - Yuval Noah Harari's books, though somewhat anecdotal as far as
history is concerned. I'd say there are way too many to list here and there is
way too much to read about all major events in history to fit in just a few
books.

~~~
ampdepolymerase
Half of the books here are pop science books, they are not textbooks.

~~~
axegon_
~ish. All of those are imo perfect introductions to each of those subjects and
can give you an idea where your next step should be.

~~~
ampdepolymerase
No they are not. It is an absolute disgrace to the other sciences if you put
stuff like _The Selfish Gene_ in the same class as Spivak. Do you want people
to go around telling CS beginners that _Hackers and Painters_ is an
introductory CS textbook? Or to tell a student of complexity theory that the
best way to study NP-completeness is through reading _Gödel, Escher, Bach_?

~~~
axegon_
I'm sorry, when exactly did I say they are in the same class? I'm not a
biologist in any way, nor I ever claimed to be one. You could say the same
about Harari in that respect. I am talking about introductions. It's the same
story with Lewin. It's nowhere near The Feynman Lectures on Physics but those
are simply not something suitable for self-education(which is what OP has
clearly stated).

------
Schiphol
I'm not sure whether David Mackay's Information Theory, Inference, and
Learning Algorithms (freely available at
[http://www.inference.org.uk/mackay/itila/book.html](http://www.inference.org.uk/mackay/itila/book.html))
counts as a textbook, but it's one of my favorite books, on any topic, in any
genre.

~~~
bb88
He also has a sense of humor, so plus one for him.

[http://www.inference.org.uk/mackay/itila/Potter.html](http://www.inference.org.uk/mackay/itila/Potter.html)

~~~
maxov
_Had_. Unfortunately Professor MacKay passed away from cancer in 2016. We lost
a great soul.

I concur that his textbook and sense of humor were fantastic. It was very
enjoyable for me to learn the material from his lectures. They are a great
supplement to the textbook (or maybe vice versa?) and you can find them here:
[https://youtu.be/BCiZc0n6COY](https://youtu.be/BCiZc0n6COY)

------
tambourineman88
The 2nd edition of Statistical Rethinking by Richard McElreath came out
recently and is great. It's a rare thing to want to read a statistics textbook
cover to cover but I did with this and enjoyed it. The practice questions are
very well designed and I think get the difficulty about right for the target
audience (natural and social science post-grad students).

If R isn't your bag then there are many translations of the code examples to
other languages available online.

~~~
disabled
Statistical Rethinking is solid for learning very, very, complicated concepts,
such as various tricky implementations of Markov chain Monte Carlo.

------
yomly
For Chemistry - Atkins' Physical Chemistry and Claydens' Organic Chemistry are
the bibles.

Will take you from undergrad to bits of grad school. Encompassing and clear.

It was a bit harder to find as good a bible for inorganic chemistry.

Softley' Atomic Spectra and Keeler's Why Chemical Reactions Happen are
phenomenal primers too but are a bit smaller in scope than the aforementioned
two.

The same Atkins from above also wrote Molecular Quantum Mechanics which is
also a solid text

~~~
WWWWH
I’m a big fan of all of these. Clayden is very gentle (or maybe that’s just
Org being easy...). But Atkins gets hard quite fast—-the chat from first years
is that beginners will find it a bit tough. I’d generally recommend the cut
down Atkins to start (Elements of...) or if you prefer pop Sci The Second Law
was great as an UG trying to wrap my head around this. Creation Revisited also
rocks.

~~~
yomly
Yeah Atkins was quite heavy. That said, I think it does a good job of being
self-contained. You could more or less get 80-90% of what you need with only
that text from high school knowledge. But without additional resources and
teachers supplementing, it will probably be too gruelling.

I think that's more because physical chemistry is quite hard

~~~
totony
I second atkins, it's a classic and covers base to more advanced subjects very
well imo.

I feel it takes time to read, but it's the one book that provided the most
value in my understanding of chemistry.

------
yomly
SICP is great for me because I get new things from it on repeated readings.
The original content is ostensibly suitable for a freshman (provided you are
familiar with the mathematical domain) but the ideas around abstraction and
modularity are timeless. If you study and reflect on the content, Sussman and
Abelson are truly trying to guide the student to arrive at an appreciation of
software engineering concepts.

I remember there being a question where after implementing a tree where the
leaf nodes are represented as a list, they then pose the question - how much
of your code needs to change if you needed to reimplement them as a pair?

The point being a pithy lesson in indirection/abstraction - had the student
set up named accessors, there would be very little code to change.

~~~
fsloth
To me the crown jewl of SICP is the universal scheme interpreter they build in
the later chapters. That opens the book to be used in _any_ language. Now we
have an internet there are hobby schemes implemented in every language, so
it's fairly easy to find ideas if you are stuck implementing the necessary
substrate using the language of your choice (ie. mostly tokenizer, parser and
some form of eval/apply).

------
watwut
History: imo, forget about textbooks. Books are much much better. Textbooks
are less readable meant for people who will force themselves to go to
lectures, revise, revise, write notes and actually study.

\- "The Third Reich Trilogy" from Richard J. Evans about Germany during WWII
is the best thing I read about WWII.

Now I am reading "The rebellious life of Mrs Rosa Park", pretty good too,
although the topic is super specific.

Also, I would also recommend to have a look at "Lectures in History" podcast
from c-span. They are are lectures from universities about American History.
The lectures also contain book recommendations, so if you are interested in
this or that topic, they are good source of books.

------
abhayb
Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective. Flies a little under the radar.
I'm definitely biased here (TA'ed the class that originated it). But by the
end of it I left with a decent understanding of x86-64 assembly to the point
that I could hand compile C functions. And also a rough and ready
understanding of how shells, malloc, and web servers work.

~~~
8589934591
I am planning to go through this book later this year. Can you help me
understand what the difference is between this and Hennessey Patterson's book
Computer Organization and Architecture? Like, why would/should I study
x86_64/ARM/RISC V/MIPS/anything else? Is there a difference in approach or the
architecture?

~~~
rramadass
They are complementary and not the same. I very highly recommend that you get
and study "Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective, 3rd edition" since it
is a very practical and detail oriented book(i.e. no hand-waving and full of
code for x86-64) for the Programmer. Hennessy & Patterson's "Computer
Organization and Design: The Hardware/Software Interface" is more high-level
with not enough depth while their "Computer Architecture: A Quantitative
Approach" is full on theory book.

------
teleforce
In my field it is Computer Networking: A Top-down Approach by Kurose. I've
been using it as the main textbook for computer networking course for more
than ten years.

On related notes, for the past few weeks I've spent countless hours searching
and compiling good to excellent textbooks in the field of engineering and
computer science. Perhaps I can share the information in the near future.

~~~
nindalf
Look into teachyourselfcs.com. They have a good list of areas every good
programmer should be comfortable with and a recommendation for books/lectures
that teaches that well. They explain why each area is important to learn and
why the book is an apt choice.

They recommend Kurose and Ross for networking too, though I disagree. I feel
like High Performance Browser Networking (free at hpbn.co) is superior.

------
okaleniuk
I can second Spivak. Apart from the classic calculus textbook, he has written
Calculus on Manifolds which is also a nice introduction into differential
geometry.

He also has a huge multi-volume textbook on differential geometry per se but I
never read it. Probably brilliant as well.

------
aj7
Halliday and Resnick, 60’s version. Feynman’s Lectures. Thomas’s Calculus
books. The Scientist and Engineer's Guide to Digital Signal Processing Steven
W. Smith, Ph.D. (Has always been available free. So good, I bought a hardcover
one.)

------
ege_erdogan
For the theoretical part of computer science, Introduction to the Theory of
Computation by Michael Sipser is the best there is.

It covers three main topics: \- Automata theory \- Computability \-
Computational Complexity

What I especially liked about the book was how he approached proofs. When
introducing a proof, there is first a short "proof idea" paragraph that
emphasizes the main approach behind the proof informally. He then gives out
the full, formal proof. For self-study, those proofs can sometimes be
intimidating, and not strictly necessary depending on your goals, but
understanding the ideas was important to understand the topic.

------
jerzyt
Pretty much any book by W. Richard Stevens, but in particular Unix Network
Programming, which made a cameo appearance in Wayne's World.

Intro to Statistical Learning by Hastie, Tibshirani, James and Witten:
[https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Statistical-Learning-
App...](https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Statistical-Learning-Applications-
Statistics/dp/1461471370/ref=sr_1_2?crid=1QHWMLAHV5B9Z&dchild=1&keywords=hastie+tibshirani&qid=1591858692&s=books&sprefix=hastie%2Cstripbooks%2C211&sr=1-2)

------
randycupertino
Clinical Microbiology Made Ridiculously Simple.

Fantastic breakdown of micro into understandable and memorable concepts,
helped me get through intense classes while making it interesting via funny if
cheesy mnemonics and artwork: [https://www.amazon.com/Clinical-Microbiology-
Made-Ridiculous...](https://www.amazon.com/Clinical-Microbiology-Made-
Ridiculously-Simple/dp/1935660152)

All of the "Made Ridiculously Simple" texts from that publisher are fantastic,
but imo the Clinical Microbiology is the best of the best.

------
Boulth
Statistics by Freedman et al is a great introduction to statistics. It took me
a year to fully read it but the exercises are fun, real world examples of
applying statistical methods.

------
mhh__
Visual Complex Analysis is the best mathematics book I've ever read.

Siegel's free (and source available IIRC) textbook on quantum field and string
theory (can't comment on treatment of the latter) is a nice, if completely
impenetrable by virtue of being enormous, book.

I recommend "Advanced Tire Mechanics" to anyone looking for a proper, modern,
book on the subject - Pacejka's writing is messy and dull.

------
whymauri
History:

I asked on /r/askhistorians for book suggestions on the history of China.

> _The History of Imperial China series edited by Timothy Brook consists of
> six roughly 200-page long volumes, each of which covers one or two dynastic
> periods._

I read the first volume and enjoyed it. And I feel safe in recommending the
set given the endorsement from a scholar on the topic.

~~~
thomasahle
That sounds interesting. Does it exist as an audio book?

------
betocmn
Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst, by Robert Sapolsky [1].

A fascinating multidisciplinary approach to explain what happens behind our
most consequential behaviours.

[1]
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31170723-behave](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31170723-behave)

~~~
cellularmitosis
He is also a fantastic lecturer! Just the right amount of humor.
[https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=robert+sapolsky](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=robert+sapolsky)

------
BruceEel
Highly subjective but:

K&R indeed and K&Pike's 'The Practice of Programming'.

Vince's 'Mathematics for computer graphics' (haven't read his calculus book
but it's on the wishlist).

Petzold's 'Code'.

Leventhal's Z80 and MC68000 books back in the day.

------
loughnane
In mechanical engineering:

\- Mechanical Engineering Design, Shigley

\- Mechanism and Mechanical Devices Sourcebook, Sclater

\- Foundations of Mechanical Accuracy, Moore

\- Machinery's Handbook

\- Structure and Interpretation of... Classical Mechanics, Sussman

And just for fun:

\- 507 Mechanical Movements, Brown

\- Handbook of Compliant Mechanisms, Howell

------
marcus_
Michael Sipser's Introduction to the Theory of Computation. Teaches you formal
languages, decidability and complexity theory in a very rigorous way with
little prerequisites.

------
dehrmann
It's great that you're the sort of person who learns from text books, but I'm
seriously bad at it. Maybe it has something to do with learning styles?

------
paviva
Paul Marino, The ICU Book.

Sapira's Art and Science of Bedside Diagnosis

------
AmericanChopper
On Baking

It has some good recipes in it, but the instruction it provides on baking and
pastry making has really helped me improve my technique over the years.

------
sansnomme
For biology, assuming a CS/engineering background:

Campbell's Biology

Synthetic biology: A Primer

An introduction to systems biology by Uri Alon (get the 2020 edition)

O'Reilly: Biobuilder

~~~
whymauri
A good Open Courseware companion for the SynthBio texts is 20.305x Principles
of Synthetic Biology.

------
alexgmcm
The Elements of Computing Systems - Noam Nisan and Shimon Schocken (MIT Press)

It's used in the Nand2Tetris course[1].

It guides you through building a computer and writing an assembler and
compiler.

It's not so much a textbook you read as a textbook you _do_.

[1] [https://www.nand2tetris.org/](https://www.nand2tetris.org/)

------
nurettin
Computer system architecture

Morris Mano

At the end of the book, you are able to design the entire computer
architecture from humble logic gates.

~~~
Alekhine
It's a funny coincidence you reccomend that book, since it's already in my
library. Found it at a local dump by chance. Had no idea it was well-regarded.

~~~
nurettin
It holds your hand through creating memory, adders, muxers from logic gates
and then finally ending up with a virtual machine you can actually program
with a made up assembly language.

Because of it, I have a perspective on constraints and state machines that
helps with my day job as a programmer and distinguishes me from collegues.

Sometimes even a dump can contain great wisdom.

------
8589934591
"Breaking India" By Rajiv malhotra -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_India](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_India)

This book shows the systematic intervention in undermining and uprooting
hinduism in south india.

------
ArtWomb
In Computer Graphics, I'd give mad props to Wolfgang Engel. He's authored,
edited and contributed to foundational reference series: GPU Gems, ShaderX,
GPU Pro, GPU Zen. He was also an evangelist for GPGPU a decade before it
became the modern basis for AI research ;)

------
rawoke083600
My choice although its not comp.sci is '22 immutable Laws Of Marketing' As
most coders marketing doesn't come as easy to me as coding but damn this old
little gem is full of practical mental models and use cases. Very easy read
and does not read like a textbook.

~~~
eiliant
you mean 22 right?

~~~
rawoke083600
Darn ! Lol sorry yes !

------
SamReidHughes
I think _Concrete Mathematics_ is the most polished textbook I know of.

------
dpeck
On Food and Cooking is a wonderful introduction to practical everyday food
science.

------
dkersten
Never Split the Difference, by Chris Voss, a former FBI hostage negotiator.
Not a textbook exactly, but its the book on negotiation I think everybody
should read. His interviews and lectures on youtube are pretty good too.

~~~
gozzoo
I found it a little bit naive. His examples from hosting situations are very
interesting, but I think the generalizations too vague to be useful and the
application of the discovered principles in business quite unrealistic.

~~~
fsloth
"application of the discovered principles in business quite unrealistic."

I'm not so sure. The main point of the book I think was that very few
negotiations are rational. That's the key message. Then there are lots of
anecdotes and self promotion which are not that helpfull. But the key message,
I think, is solid.

Most people go to a room expecting some sort of analytic hammering out between
two equal parties, when in reality if the other party is prepared with some
sort of influence tactic based script and the one is not, the one with the
plan comes out winner, especially if the other party is not prepared.

Just ask telemarketers.

If one of the agent in a two party negotiation has a script and a strategy
then if the other party does not, the one that has _any_ kind of strategy and
script is usually ahead. And another key point was - the winning script does
need to be rational, it can target emotions and feelings as well.

Again, telemarketers. "Do you want to buy our insurance? No? Wait, think about
_how terrible_ it would be if something bad like <insert insured event> would
happen? _Surely_ you would like to be prepared for such an eventuality"

These are of course applicable only to adverserial negotiations, and not all
negotiations need to be like that.

~~~
dkersten
Yes, thats definitely a key point: people are not rational creatures, but
emotional. The rest of the book is just about ways you can tap into or get
around that.

Another key point of the book is to let your counterpart talk as much as
possible, while you listen. _Really_ listen. Again, the techniques discussed
are tools to help with that.

Everything else is sbout calming the person down, making them feel understood
and heard, and unearthing what it is they actually value.

------
uptownfunk
Baby Rudin, you'll come out a different person. (There might be some tears..)

------
venmul
Physics Grob: Basic Electronics The Feynman Lectures on Physics -
[https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu](https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu)

------
leonardoeloy
Concepts of Programming Languages by Sebesta. This helped me understand what
abstractions are all about.

------
danielheath
Cooking: Larousse Gastronomique

History/Anthropology: Seeing Like A State

~~~
mixologic
How does that compare to 'On Food and Cooking' by Harold McGee?

------
sidchilling
For Newtonian Physics - Concepts of Physics by HC Verma

------
OrbitalHeat
Spivaks Physics for Mathematicians is a blessing - even for physicists. and
Quantum Field Theory for the gifted amateur is a surprisingly fun read.

------
oldsklgdfth
Digital Signal Processing by Alan V. Oppenheim and Ronald W. Schafer

Microelectronic circuits by Adel Sedra and Kenneth C. Smith

Introduction to Linear Algebra by Gilbert Strang

------
yyhew
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson is a nice read on the
history and development of science and mathematics.

------
throwwwaway
If you develop software, Martin Fowler's "Refactoring" is an excellent
journeyman level book.

------
mD5pPxMcS6fVWKE
I see young people don't swear by Knuth anymore, like we did in the good ole
times .

------
cafard
Hennessy and Patterson's book on computer architecture.

Gray and Reuter on transaction processing.

------
alfiedotwtf
The Little Schemer by Friedman and Felleisen, and Naive Set Theory by Paul
Halmos

------
yeonsh
For programming, I enojyed reading Oh! Pascal 2nd Edition by Doug Cooper et
al.

------
082349872349872
History, long form: Durant & Durant, "The Story of Civilization"

History, short form: Orwell, "Animal Farm"

(One of these 20th century works is an extended treatment of a bunch of animal
bad apples who lie, cheat, and steal to maintain power over their fellow
animals. The other is fiction)

~~~
jmeister
Animal Form is not a textbook in any way whatsoever. Downvoted.

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blaisehorvath
For Biology, and especially for Molecular biology I'd go for:

\- Albert's Molecular Biology of the cell -
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/0815344325/ref=dp-kindle-
redirect?...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0815344325/ref=dp-kindle-
redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1) \- It introduces basic Biochemistry, a lot of
Genetics and Gene-regulation and Developmental biology. The book also touches
other areas (but very vaguely) like Immunology... I think if you read this
book you will be able to understand modern Molecular Biology papers.

\- Biochem: Legninger's Principles of Biochemistry
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01K0PYUYQ/ref=dp-kindle-
redirect?...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01K0PYUYQ/ref=dp-kindle-
redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1) \- Our prof taught us from this, it has great
visuals and covers a lot of areas.

\- Developmental biology: Gilbert's - [https://www.amazon.com/Developmental-
Biology-Tenth-Scott-Gil...](https://www.amazon.com/Developmental-Biology-
Tenth-Scott-Gilbert/dp/0878939784) \- it introduces more genetic regulation
and development for all walks of life

\- Human developmental biology: Bruce M. Carlson - Human Embryology and
Developmental biology - [https://www.amazon.com/Human-Embryology-
Developmental-Biolog...](https://www.amazon.com/Human-Embryology-
Developmental-Biology-Book-
ebook/dp/B07KYNPMGJ/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_2?dchild=1&keywords=bruce+m+carlson+embriology&qid=1591859392&s=books&sr=1-2-fkmr0)
\- Again it's the choice of my prof, but I loved it, great images and visual
explanations.

\- Anatomy: I'd definitely go for anything by Netter ->
[https://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Human-Anatomy-Netter-
Science/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Human-Anatomy-Netter-
Science/dp/0323393225)

\- Cancer: Robert A. Weinberg - The biology of cancer -
[https://www.amazon.com/Biology-Cancer-2nd-Robert-
Weinberg/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Biology-Cancer-2nd-Robert-
Weinberg/dp/0815342209)

\- Plant biochem: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology of Plants -
[https://www.amazon.com/Biochemistry-Molecular-Biology-
Plants...](https://www.amazon.com/Biochemistry-Molecular-Biology-Plants-
Buchanan/dp/0470714212) \- A very good book with great illustrations.

For electronics and Embedded:

\- Art of Electronics by Paul Horovitz - [https://www.amazon.com/Art-
Electronics-Paul-Horowitz-ebook/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Art-Electronics-
Paul-Horowitz-ebook/dp/B01BYJO2JU) \- I saw that others also suggested it,
great book

\- Paul Scherz - Practical Electronics for inventors -
[https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Electronics-Inventors-
Fourt...](https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Electronics-Inventors-Fourth-
Scherz/dp/1259587541) \- I was introduced to electronics via this book. Not
really a textbook but it's I think it's a great book to get started, it covers
almost the same topics as the Art of Electronics but not as deep and with
better visual explanations.

\- Embedded systems - Michael Barr - Programming Embedded Systems in C and C++
- I was introduced to embedded software development by this book, when I was
working for an IoT company and only had experience with systems and web
programming.

Programming (my cherry picked favourites):

\- Hacking: The Art of Exploitation - I love this book. I've read it after I
had a few years of professional programming experience with C#. It introduces
programming via C, also every example program is disassembled with GDB. It
gives the reader an intuition of how C code compiled and what happens on the
register level.

\- C in a Nutshell: The Definitive Reference - Usually when you search for
good books to learn C from, you get titles like The C programming language,
Deep C Secret. But I think C in a Nutshell beats all other C books.
(Especially when you read it together with C related chapters from The Art of
Exploitation).

\- Functional Programming in Scala -
[https://www.manning.com/books/functional-programming-in-
scal...](https://www.manning.com/books/functional-programming-in-scala) \- I
saw that other people suggested SICP, and I agree with that, it does a great
job introducing to some parts of functional programming. But FPIS also
introduces a strictly typed aspect of FP, functional parallelism, functional
designs patterns... It's a great book.

\- Concurrency in Go: Tools and Techniques for Developers -
[https://www.amazon.com/Concurrency-Go-Tools-Techniques-
Devel...](https://www.amazon.com/Concurrency-Go-Tools-Techniques-
Developers/dp/1491941197) \- I love the Go language and how it handles
concurrency. This book does a great job of describing how the go runtime
works, and does a great job explaining concurrency in general. Also there are
a lot of good design patters in it.

\- Professor Frisby's Mostly Adequate Guide to Functional Programming -
[https://github.com/MostlyAdequate/mostly-adequate-
guide](https://github.com/MostlyAdequate/mostly-adequate-guide) \- It's not a
textbook. This is the book that introduced me to FP. I love it, great book.

\- Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective -
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/9332573905/ref=dp-kindle-
redirect?...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/9332573905/ref=dp-kindle-
redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1) \- This was the suggested textbook for
[https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse351/](https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse351/)
that was also available on Coursera. Great book.

------
henearkr
I loved Willard's General Topology.

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debt5000
ecology of the planted aquarium by diana walstad

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rednivrah52
Sicp is outdated

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redis_mlc
K&R, Spivak, Randal's Learning Perl, Cricket's DNS and Bind, Petzold's Windows
Programming

Flipping through the Smalltalk books was an eye-opener back in the day.

There's an amazing but little-known book in the same printing style as K&R
about systems software from the MCC consortium, with tons of C source code.

