You can pull this trick with academic books, too. If you find such a work in some niche subfield you know little about, but aren't sure that book's a good place

You can pull this trick with academic books, too. If you find such a work in some niche subfield you know little about, but aren't sure that book's a good place to start, odds are good the author will name-drop most of the really important books & authors in the introduction. If you do this with two or three and cross-reference, any mentioned in more than one is probably something you ought to look at.