

Ask HN: What are some good general technical books for teenagers? - lovemath

I&#x27;m a programmer by profession.  I have a teenage daughter with a general interest in art and biology.  She does well in math and science in school but isn&#x27;t very enthusiastic about computers or technology.<p>I&#x27;d like to find some good general books about technical subjects for her.  Unfortunately the selection at local bookstores is rather limited and their books are either too simplistic, too specific or both.<p>I know there are plenty of good programming books available but I&#x27;m not looking for books on programming per se as I already have a few shelves of books like SICP, TLoL, PiP, AMOP, etc. as well as more abstract works like GEB and she&#x27;s shown no interest in those as of yet.<p>What I&#x27;ve been hoping to find is something that covers technology more generally:  something that explains some interesting way a particular physical, chemical, mathematical or other technical principle appears in some network or system of machines and structures we build and maintain.<p>Can any similarly minded parents out there share any success stories?
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dmlorenzetti
Check out "Physics for Future Presidents" by Richard Muller. It gives an
overview of physics, emphasizing why the concepts are important in the modern
world, rather than the math details.

If she's interested in biology, you might consider "Animals in Translation" by
Temple Grandin. It's more about animals than about technology, but it touches
on how understanding animals affects the low-tech systems that you use to
handle them.

For interesting/easy intros to why some math skills are important, look at
Darrell Huff's "How to Lie With Statistics" or John Allen Paulos' "Innumeracy"
(or "A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper").

I haven't read any of them, but I hear Petroski's books recommended.

For a great short read that touches on architectural engineering, law, and
ethics, look for Joe Morgenstern's "Fifty-Nine Story Crisis" which appeared in
the New Yorker in May 1995. It's about how the structural engineer for the
Citicorp tower realized its design was flawed, after the tower had been built
and occupied. You can find it on the web.

Some of these are not overtly about "learn this technology", but to me they
all sell the idea of technology and science as both central to our lives and
interesting.

~~~
lovemath
_Physics for Future Presidents_ is a great book - my wife gave her a copy last
spring. I don't know if my daughter finished it but I know she said she found
it interesting.

We have the the math books you mentioned but I haven't heard about the others
before. _Animals in Translation_ and _Fifty-Nine Story Crisis_ look really
good. Thanks for the reference!

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brudgers
Why push something that your daughter isn't interested in? Technology is your
interest, not hers. Get her some books by Dawkins. Turn her on to Earnst
Mayer. Check some Stephen J. Gould out of the public library for her. Take her
to Manhatten to see the Guggenheim and the Frick and MOMA and the
Metropolitan. Let her become the healthy person she wants to be. Let her own
her life.

~~~
lovemath
She's read some of Dawkins and Gould and as parents we try our best to support
all her interests but there's still a dearth of engaging books covering
technical subjects at an intermediate level.

Bookstores these days only seem to have illustrated books for younger children
and software books for "dummies".

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KenAdler
She might find inspiration in Paul Graham's "Hackers and Painters"

[http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Painters-Big-Ideas-
Computer/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Painters-Big-Ideas-
Computer/dp/1449389554)

------
vezzy-fnord
What else but Charles Petzold's phenomenal classic _CODE: The Hidden Language
of Computer Hardware and Software_? [1]

[http://www.charlespetzold.com/code/](http://www.charlespetzold.com/code/) [1]

~~~
lovemath
The sample chapter seems too simplistic so I'm not sure my daughter would find
it interesting, but I'm curious - do you know any teenagers who liked it?

~~~
vezzy-fnord
Yes.

It's not simplistic at all. It's easy to understand, but it goes fairly in
depth as to the internals of computing.

It has a very incremental approach. It starts with Morse code, Braille,
numbering systems, moves on to logic gates, Boolean logic until it reaches
microprocessors, character encoding, operating systems and finally some notes
on high-level languages.

It's renowned as a classic anywhere you go. Very entertaining, too. It has a
casual writing style.

~~~
lovemath
Perhaps simplistic is the wrong word. To me the sample chapter[1] doesn't seem
like it would be very engaging for my daughter since she's only perhiperally
interested in things that lead to computing. But thanks for the recommendation
and I'll take a closer look if I see it on the shelf.

[1]
[http://www.microsoft.com/mspress/books/sampchap/4677.aspx](http://www.microsoft.com/mspress/books/sampchap/4677.aspx)

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Snail_Commando
There are already suggestions in this thread that are better than mine, but
I'll still throw my hat in the ring.

That's great that she's interested in biology. I'd like to gently suggest that
if she "isn't very enthusiastic about computers or technology", you should
instead try to nurture her demonstrated interest in art, biology, and other
science.

I know absolutely nothing about art, except that I apparently have no taste.
So I'll refrain from making any suggestions on art books.

TL;DR: Skip down to the third section for the "technical book" suggestion.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(1)

Here are some suggestions of books on general science, biology, and chemistry
(in no particular order, these are some of the first ones that come to my
mind):

"The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" By Thomas S. Kuhn

"The Diversity of Life" By Edward O. Wilson

"The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time" by Jonathan Weiner

"Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History" by
Stephen Jay Gould

"Life on a Young Planet" By Andrew H. Knoll

"Galápagos" By Kurt Vonnegut (Fiction, but related) (I loved this book, but
it's not for everyone I suppose. A couple of my friends didn't like it.)

"Napoleon's Buttons" By Penny Le Couteur and Jay Burreson

"The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher" By Lewis Thomas

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(2)

If she's interested in learning _a lot_ about cellular biology in beautifully
exhaustive detail, buy her this textbook:

"Molecular Biology of the Cell" By Bruce Alberts, Paul Walter, Alexander
Johnson, Julian Lewis, Martin Raff, Keith Roberts

This book is huge. And it is wonderful.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 __\---Read this suggestion if my other suggestions aren 't good--- __

(3)

So you want a technical book? And she's interested in biology?

Buy her a copy of:

"The Principles of Biomedical Informatics" By Ira J. Kalet

This textbook is incredible. It teaches you some fundamentals of many
different flavors of bioinformatics. (Different flavors, because, as the
author acknowledges, bioinformatics can mean many things.) You can learn how
to work with amino acid sequences, protein modeling, medical imaging,
probabilistic biomedical models, and more!

Since you have SICP and LoL on your bookshelf already, you might love the next
part. The entire textbook is a cleverly accessible primer on how to build
applications with Common Lisp. Whether you're a greybeard Lisp hacker or a
repl-noob, you'll like this book if you are interested in learning about
bioinformatics.

I've had the first edition for quite some time. Recently, I think in the past
few months, a second edition was released. Someone gifted me the 2nd ed, :)
but I haven't really compared the two.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I was going to suggest Gödel, Escher, Bach when you mentioned she was
interested in art, and were hoping to find a technical book for her. Then I
saw that you already had tried that one. I'm going to leave the suggestion
anyway because these types of threads are wonderful for finding great books.

