But, for instance, the linguistics recommendation is seemingly based on the remarks of one pseudo-anonymous commenter. And it's also hard to give such general r

But, for instance, the linguistics recommendation is seemingly based on the remarks of one pseudo-anonymous commenter. And it's also hard to give such general recommendations for large subjects. Even at a more generalist level, do you want a really, really general overview of the broadest possible coverage? Or do you want a slightly more focussed overview that actually gets into somewhat more meaning information? Certainly for a course textbook, the former type isn't very useful at all.