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Ask HN: What's the best textbook you've read?
- dfex 9y agoMPLS-Enabled Applications: Emerging Developments and New Technologies by Ina Minei and Julian Lucek. There are a lot of books out there on MPLS services, but this one stands out for me because of the way it is written: the subject matter is clearly explains some very complex topics in a way that even a beginner network engineer could grasp, while not being a wordy tome that you never get around to finishing.
- tom_mellior 9y agoA bit late to this party, but: Campbell et al.'s "Biology" is the best textbook I've ever read. It starts at entry level but goes really deep. Everything is explained very well and beautifully illustrated. To add context to the "hard" scientific content, there are also interviews with leading researchers in biology who provide their points of view on the main themes of the book. There is a bewildering confusion of editions and versions of this book, but look for a book called "Biology" or "Campbell Biology" with Neil A. Campbell and Jane B. Reece in the author list, but not necessarily listed first. There is what I believe to be an abridged version called "Biology: Concepts and Connections", and something called "Biology: A Global Approach", which may just be the name for the newest editions.
- veddox 9y agoYep, that's the one I was going to say :-) "It goes really deep" is, unfortunately, a relative description. Half-way through my undergraduate studies, I had pretty much outgrown it and needed more specialized books. Nonetheless, it is a superb entry-level college textbook that covers the entire breadth of modern biology. The text is very understandable and gives more background information than is needed for a typical introductory lecture to any given topic (while still emphasizing the salient points so you don't get confused). Apart from the above-mentionend interviews, it also includes sections on current methods in biology, which are pretty handy when you're new to the field. Plus, the illustrations are simply excellent: pretty to look at and a huge help for understanding. On the whole, I find it to be one of the most aesthetically pleasing textbooks I know. (Beaten only by Futuyma's "Evolution".) My best investment in university so far!
- veddox 9y agoGilbert's "Developmental Biology" is another great (and really good-looking) textbook. It almost made me want to go into developmental biology, just for the textbook :D
- damionx7 9y agoDenial of death by Ernest becker
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- boysabr3 9y agoHaven't read it personally but heard great things about: Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming: Case Studies in Common Lisp - Peter Norvig https://www.amazon.com/dp/1558601910 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1558601910
- simon_acca 9y ago"Best" is a vague metric, but one textbook I am always happy to recommend is the Princeton Companion to Mathematics. The book is a selective review of the most significant ideas in maths and mathematical research. The great editorial process is what sets this book apart from the rest: each chapter is authored by an outstanding expert in his/her particular field (among which several fields medalist the likes of Terence Tao) and the editing by Timothy Gowers does an amazing job of uniforming the tone, notation and rigor across the whole text. The authors were evidently chosen also for their communication skills since the articles come across as quite discoursive and really convey the beauty of modern maths. In the book you'll find not only the articles on mathematical concepts, but also an introduction to modern mathematics, chapters on the relationship of maths with other sciences, a thorough history of mathematics and a collection of biographies of famous mathematicians. Well recommended to anybody with an interest in maths. My background is in CS and I found it approachable (except minor sections) and illuminating!
- decasteve 9y agoI read almost all of it cover to cover when I was an undergrad in math, when I still had intention of going to grad school, to get a sense of which area(s) of math I'd like to pursue further. It is incredibly illuminating and I also recommend it highly.
- bewe42 9y agoSICP In case you didn't know, have a look at http://lesswrong.com/lw/3gu/the_best_textbooks_on_every_subject/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/3gu/the_best_textbooks_on_every_subj...
- stuxnet79 9y agoThis has been recommended a lot. I'm gonna buy it on Amazon and work through it slowly.
- Buttons840 9y agoSICP is online for free (legally) from MIT's website, or there are some community version with cleaner layout. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13918465 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13918465 I've only worked through Chapter 1. The text is interesting, but most of my learning has come from the exercises. You should plan to do the exercises. Also, don't worry if you have to skip a few exercises and come back to them later. Don't allow yourself to be bogged down and loose interest over a single difficult exercise.
- bewe42 9y agoyes, no need to buy it. and you are right, the value lies in the exercises. I started doing them in Clojure. I recommend doing as many as you can and then you'll find plenty of solutions online to compare your results. It's worth it
- ayushgp 9y agoThere is an interactive version of that textbook you can read. It actually helps to do the exercises with the text. You can Google it. I read that book using that version and it was amazing.
- ken 9y agoThe Feynman Lectures. (I think I've read the first volume, at least, even though I don't claim to have understood it all.)
- deepaksurti 9y ago3 so far: 1. Elements of Computing Systems 2. On Lisp 3. Game Engine Architecture Edit: 2 -> 3
- godelmachine 9y agoElements of Computing Systems is NAND2TETRIS, right?
- deepaksurti 9y agoYes, it is.
- justin66 9y agoIntroduction to Algorithms (CLRS). With the caveat that I'm not sure I've ever "read" a textbook, but I've referred to a lot of them.
- drdrey 9y agoComputability and Complexity by Neil Jones: http://www.diku.dk/~neil/comp2book2007/book-whole.pdf http://www.diku.dk/~neil/comp2book2007/book-whole.pdf It is extremely readable and presents very theoretical concepts in a pragmatic way. Love it.
- gabriel 9y agoLisp in Small Pieces: https://pages.lip6.fr/Christian.Queinnec/WWW/LiSP.html https://pages.lip6.fr/Christian.Queinnec/WWW/LiSP.html An excellent and very fun read about compilation, interpretation, and programming semantics. I don’t think you already have to know LISP, although there isn’t an introduction, but if you know any programming it would be enough to pick up the programs that are used as examples. Source code from the book is available and you will end up programming as you move along and it is a delight to see yourself make a program that can interpret another program.
- ghosthamlet 9y agoThere is: Clojure in Small Pieces，http://daly.axiom-developer.org/clojure.pdf http://daly.axiom-developer.org/clojure.pdf
- hnarayanan 9y agoNumerical Linear Algebra by Trefethen and Bau.
- achompas 9y agoI loved working through this years ago. Clear and succinct.
- Eridrus 9y agoReinforcement Learning 2nd Ed By Sutton & Barto was surprisingly readable.
- drdrey 9y agoI'd like to piggyback on this question and ask specifically for a good textbook on distributed systems
- taserian 9y agoA dear favorite of mine was Baldor's Algebra. Everyone else in high school was scared of it, but I found it to be very methodical and easy to follow from one topic to another. Picture of the cover, with text in Spanish: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%81lgebra_de_Baldor https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%81lgebra_de_Baldor
- clort 9y agoThe C Programming Language, by Kernighan & Ritchie (2nd Edition). I picked that up and was hooked.. 30 years ago
- Tepix 9y agoReally? I've read it a few times but I never thought it was a great book.
- randcraw 9y agoI liked the first edition of K&R a lot. Today I suspect it shines most when compared to recent intro language books. It was succinct yet offered insight into both the language's design concepts and its implementation -- an introduction to software based on Strunk & White's spartan model of exposition. Given the abstract nature and swiss-army knife mission creep of today's languages, it's a rare intro PL book today that's smaller than 600 pages. (K&R 1978 fit into a mere 220.)
- npr11 9y agoIntroduction to Probability, by Blitzstein and Hwang. Builds your intuition for the most unintuitive subject.
- repsak 9y agoHaven't read the book but the lectures are good! https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2SOU6wwxB0uwwH80KTQ6ht66KWxbzTIo https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2SOU6wwxB0uwwH80KTQ6ht66...
- busterarm 9y agoI've seen SICP and Elements of Computing mentioned already. I'd like to throw "The Nature of Code" in with these.
- joefarish 9y agoEngineering Mathematics and Advanced Engineering Mathematics by Ken Stroud Lots of worked examples. Very easy to follow and really helped me "teach myself" calculus and advanced calculus.
- colanderman 9y agoStrang's Linear Algebra: http://math.mit.edu/~gs/linearalgebra/ http://math.mit.edu/~gs/linearalgebra/ Concise, clear, thorough. Strang is a great author.
- yesenadam 9y agoI watched so far the first 7 or 8 lectures on youtube of his linear algebra course. (Which something like a million people have watched) He's such a great lecturer, extremely impressive. So mysteriously good it makes me wonder what it is about them that seem so good. He says somewhere about how he gets a lot of mail thanking him, that people appreciate that he's on their side. It's just done with what the experience is like for the student always in mind. Sounds simple, but there are plenty of lecture/course videos on youtube where that obviously wasn't given a thought.
- kuang_eleven 9y agoIntroduction of Quantum Mechanics and Introduction to Electrodynamics, both by David J. Griffiths. He also wrote Introduction to Elementary Particles, but I have not read that one. Both books masterfully take exceptionally complex fields and break them down into easily digested chunks, with a clear progression of ideas as you go through the book. Do note that these are "Introduction" books written for Junior/Senior Physics majors.
- kuang_eleven 9y agoYou should also have a solid background in calculus before fully understanding these books. Typically, Physics majors take every undergrad calculus class offered in the math dept. at a college, then a few more in Physics just to be sure.
- iamatworknow 9y agoI'd say if you have a basic understanding of calculus (derivatives and integrals), you could get though Griffiths' books with another companion book, like what my college used: https://www.amazon.com/Mathematical-Methods-Physical-Sciences-Mary/dp/0471198269 https://www.amazon.com/Mathematical-Methods-Physical-Science... I'm still upset that my copies of Griffiths' texts were stolen my senior year of college...
- kuang_eleven 9y agoYeah, I could see that. Mostly, you need to be really comfortable with multivariable integration.
- Woberto 9y agoI had to learn some quantum for a graduate class, and even with my engineering background, Intro to Quantum by Griffiths was both extremely helpful and an awesome read. It's the first book that came to mind when I read the question.
- 27182818284 9y ago>Griffiths Yes! I actually jumped in this thread to recommend Griffiths' Electrodynamics. Even the review sections on how to think about things like divergence and curl is particularly well done by Griffiths.
- matt_the_bass 9y agoThe Art of Electronics by Horowitz and Hill It covers nearly all aspects of electronics both theory and practice. It’s still relevant after all these years.
- Finnucane 9y agoThe third edition is still fairly current. So to speak.
- Hockenbrizzle 9y agoI didn't learn electronics with this book, but I really wish I did. I used it to give tutorials for an undergraduate electronics course for physics students and it was immensely useful and well organized.
- matt_the_bass 9y agoThe work book that goes along with it is also top notch.
- indescions_2018 9y agoHave been recommending CASI to everyone who listens. Everyone has their own unique datasets. And anyone can install data science platforms such as Anacondas. But being able to map a particular algorithm to the inference you wish to make. And understanding, from a historical context, precisely what that inferences means at a philosophical level. That is where this text will assist on your path to mastery. Computer Age Statistical Inference https://web.stanford.edu/~hastie/CASI/ https://web.stanford.edu/~hastie/CASI/
- bobosha 9y agoAI - A modern approach by Russell & Norvig. http://aima.cs.berkeley.edu/ http://aima.cs.berkeley.edu/
- Analemma_ 9y agoThis is the one textbook that’s a common denominator at my work. Almost everyone seems to have a copy, and for good reason.
- stealthcat 9y agoHow to use this book? My machine learning lab have few copies but nobody seems to be using it.
- ayushgp 9y agoIt's actually not all that useful for Machine learning and is more focused on other aspects of AI. It talks a lot about propositional logic, knowledge representation, etc.
- pruthvishetty 9y agoThe Elements of Statistical Learning. (https://web.stanford.edu/~hastie/Papers/ESLII.pdf https://web.stanford.edu/~hastie/Papers/ESLII.pdf)
- joshvm 9y agoIt's not the best textbook ever, but Shankar's book on quantum mechanics is interesting. It builds everything from ideas about vector spaces and the underlying mathematics (in an accessible way) before quantum magically pops out. You end up understanding bra-ket notation without realising it.
- vinchuco 9y agoCombinatorics, A guided tour - Mazur
- vmarshall23 9y agoWell, for nerd books, "Modern Operating Systems" by Andrew Andrew Tanenbaum. It was until years later that I realized just how much I had learned from that book, and the consolidated notes from the Usenet flame war between him and Linus Torvalds. There's just so much "how does all this shit actually work" in there ....
- mattbgates 9y agoUnfortunately, someone stole it from me, but it was an introduction to philosophy book that really opened up my mind, introducing philosphers including Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Confuscious, Hobbes, Hume, Foucault, Kant, Kierkegaard, Lao Tzu, Locke, Marx, Mill, Rand, and more. It basically covered who they were, how they grew up, and what they've stated that has helped contribute to our society. Very interesting book. Can't recall the exact name of it, but I don't the book anymore to do my research and read any of these philosophers.
- dukeflukem 9y agoThere is something ironic about stealing a philosophy book!
- Hockenbrizzle 9y agoFor a textbook where the author does a brilliant job of introducing a complex topic: Spacetime and Geometry an Introduction to General Relativity by Sean Carroll. Also the textbooks by David Griffiths and Gill Strang mentioned in other comments.
- lodi 9y agoType-Driven Development with Idris https://www.manning.com/books/type-driven-development-with-idris https://www.manning.com/books/type-driven-development-with-i...
- cozzyd 9y agoSakurai Quantum Mechanics
- arbales 9y agoThe Unfinished Nation by Alan Brinkley
- jpamata 9y agoCoding the Matrix: Linear Algebra through Applications to Computer Science [0] A hands on introduction to both Python and Linear Algebra using real world cases (ex. you are given a high res image, make a low res version to put on your website so that it could load more quickly). [0] https://www.amazon.com/Coding-Matrix-Algebra-Applications-Computer/dp/0615880991 https://www.amazon.com/Coding-Matrix-Algebra-Applications-Co...
- yesenadam 9y agoVisual Complex Analysis - Needham. A lot of great pictures, exerything is explained (and shown) geometrically. Complex differentiation/integration, non-Euclidean geometry, vector fields etc. Mathematics and its History - Stillwell. Wonderfully written. From the ancients to the 20th century, covers the mathematics (in a lot of detail) and lives of major mathematicians (potted bios). Concrete Mathematics - Knuth et al. Discrete maths, number theory, generating functions, covers most of the maths that pops up continually in programming. All You Wanted To Know About Mathematics But Were Afraid To Ask. Mathematics for Science Students 2 Vols. - Louis Lyons. Pretty basic, but covers all the mathematical basics for physics. (1st year uni level I guess) I learned a lot from this years ago, I still consult it as a reference. It's a pleasure to read. Also, all of Hamming's books.
- badpun 9y agoSpivak's "Calculus".
- Tepix 9y agoThe Camel book¹ is pretty fantastic. I hope the "Learning Perl 6" book by brian d. foy will be as good. -- ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_Perl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_Perl
- fiftyacorn 9y agoNot tech - but "German - A Structural Approach". Its the only book i still have from uni. It breaks the language down, and made it easy for a techie like me to learn german. Can still speak a fair bit
- md2be 9y agoMorrison and Boyd, Organic chemistry Guidurati, Econometrics Samuelson, Economics
- dyeje 9y agoComputer Networks by Tanenbaum Entertaining and insightful.