I have to admit that I have often disagreed with others over what textbooks are best, but I think that's natural.<p>For one, you often start a field with a specific book. If you pour a lot of time into that book, you often feel more attached to it. Then, when trying to evaluate another textbook, it's hard (impossible?) to go through that same experience and understand if you would have had an easier time with the material. There are definitely some obvious cases, but it isn't always.<p>Second, sometimes people just have different learning styles and have a preference for them. Landau and Lifshitz has a reputation for being very hard (but rewarding!) to parse, and that is easily a showstopper for some people. Other books might only have relatively easy exercises (Axler's Linear Algebra Done Right, for example), which can help you gain a lot of confidence, while others might have many very difficult or very tedious problems. Some might have solutions to problems, some might not.<p>Really, I think the best we can do is put a list of "top books" for each subject rather than the "best textbooks" for each subject.
How do I re-learn math up to a level just before say a US undergrad in Math?<p>I hated math when I was in secondary-school, but loved computers so did a computer science course which was heavy-ish math in its final year.<p>Passed that course and now am in a pretty decent programming role, but I feel like my maths is just built on such a shaky foundation that I maybe could improve my programming and problem solving if I solidified the base.<p>Is there any one text book I could get which would teach me up to that level of Math?<p>I suspect no, because Math is so broad, but generally if I could get an entire pre-university schooling in Math I would be very happy.
Not that I have specific issues with the recommendations there, but from a conceptual standpoint, why should I trust recommendations on every subjects from a centralized non-specialized site when I can search for sites specialized in each subjects and take their recommendations on their own subjects instead.
Some of the books it is comparing are in completely different classes. For example it is comparing Griffiths Introduction to Electrodynamics and Jackson's Electrodynamics.<p>You can't read Jackson if you haven't taken Griffiths or an equivalent! Jackson is a graduate textbook whereas Griffiths is undergraduate. And if you don't have a strong math background (knowing multivariate calculus and differential equations) neither of those are recommended.<p>I think the hard thing about lists like this is that it doesn't specify who it is best for. At least compare books on the same level...
The main idea from lesswrong is to prefer textbooks over other other books.<p>More related to software, I have another rule: read the official documentation first before going somewhere else. Though often less polished than external books, it comes from the creator and it usually worth the effort.
Anyone here read the "Thinking in Systems" book? systems thinking seems to be surprisingly absent from many professional developers and engineers. Or, they lack the ability to abstract properly beyond their specific domains. I'm trying to improve this in my office and would like to find some books to hand out to people (particularly some of the more promising young folks, influence them before they get stuck in a bad mode of thought).<p>Based on the Amazon reviews it seems like it might be the sort of book I'm looking for, I'll continue to check through those and for other reviews later.
On the neuroscience recommendation: I had been reading Principles of Neural Science and decided to check out the recommendation, Neuroscience Exploring the Brain, and it actually does seem much better written and more informative/useful. Thanks for the link!
Also, most of these texts are at library genesis: <a href="http://gen.lib.rus.ec/" rel="nofollow">http://gen.lib.rus.ec/</a>
Here are mine, from my area of study (physics).<p>Quantum mechanics: Cohen-Tannoudji et al. Simply sublime. Read the first chapter and you will understand the physics of quantum mechanics. Read the second chapter and you will understand the mathematics. The rest of the book is a reference of nearly every basic topic in nonrelativistic quantum mechanics.<p>Classical Mechanics: Landau and Lifshitz. Simply my kind of book. Terse, to the point, no faffing about, yet detailed and rich in discussion and physical insight. In other words, does not say anything it doesn't need, and doesn't omit anything that it shouldn't.<p>QFT: Peskin and Schroeder. The clearest introduction I found of this difficult topic.
I think the "best" is based on a lot of factors. I teach at a liberal arts college so the "best" book for me is an OER book because I don't want to charge my students for a book that some of them may not be able to afford. If there is something wrong or lacking in the book I tell my students what I think is right or missing.<p>What I use:<p>Public Speaking: <a href="http://www.publicspeakingproject.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.publicspeakingproject.org/</a><p>Intro to Comm: <a href="http://kell.indstate.edu/public-comm-intro/" rel="nofollow">http://kell.indstate.edu/public-comm-intro/</a> (I helped revise this and edited together one of the chapter from existing OER chapters with my own material)<p>Intro to Media Studies: <a href="http://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/BookDetail.aspx?bookId=143" rel="nofollow">http://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/BookDetail.aspx?bookId=143</a>
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.
As others have noted, a survey isn’t a good indicator of quality, as it has more to do with what people learned from.<p>An approach I have used in the past: given a field F, find universities best known in F, and see what textbooks they use in their courses.
For math and physics textbooks, I find the Chicago undergraduate bibliographies quite useful: <a href="https://github.com/ystael/chicago-ug-math-bib" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/ystael/chicago-ug-math-bib</a> and <a href="https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~abhishek/chicphys.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~abhishek/chicphys.htm</a>
I’m a big fan of reading textbooks. I tend to buy and read several texts on the subjects that interest me most, and then continually to revisit each of them as my experience and knowledge in the subject broadens and deepens.<p>But I feel like this sort of list is basically misguided, because the textbook that best suits a reader depends crucially on (a) the reader’s particular background and (b) the reader’s goals in learning a subject. Every textbook on a particular subject is written for a different target audience and emphasizes different aspects of the subject, so in addition to trying to identify overall quality of exposition, prospective readers should try to identify the text that best suits their knowledge and interests as they sit down to read. And after reading one text, a reader’s knowledge and interest in the subject should have changed substantially: his or her interest may be exhausted, but if it’s piqued the reader should then move on to another text that covers the subject more deeply or from a different perspective.<p>In short, there is no such thing as a “best” textbook. There are good and bad texts, but they’re good and bad for different readers. Well, there are some texts that are just bad and will be bad for just about any reader, but the good ones are all good only for a certain subset of readers whose background in the subject and its prerequisites, and whose goals in learning it, best match what the author had in mind (or implicitly assumes).
Spivak's Calculus, oh, the memories!
Logic at its finest. Definitely a nice maths book, as <i>it is the place to learn how logical reasoning combined with fundamental concepts can be developed into a rigorous mathematical theory rather than a bunch of tools and techniques learned by rote</i>.<p>Combine with the oldish, but still unbeatable in their clarity and charisma, video lectures by Herbert Gross and you can have tons of pure, free fun.
Alternate link with better caching: <a href="https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/xg3hXCYQPJkwHyik2/the-best-textbooks-on-every-subject" rel="nofollow">https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/xg3hXCYQPJkwHyik2/the-bes...</a>
I tried reading the modern quantum mechanics book, but it seems very difficult off the bat. Seems like there is a lot they expect you to have a very heavy physics background already. I have a major in mechanical engineering and a minor in math so I figured I had enough to work my way through it, but I don't know any more. Anyone have a recommendation for a book that can ease me into it a little better?
As per author's recommendation I checked the alibris website for books on other subjects. Unfortunately top books in programming are C/Java/Algo & Cracking interview.<p><a href="https://www.alibris.com/search/books/subject/Computers-Programming" rel="nofollow">https://www.alibris.com/search/books/subject/Computers-Progr...</a>
On electrodynamics, madhadron recommends Purcell's Electricity and Magnetism over Griffith's Introduction to Electrodynamics, Feynman's Lectures on Physics, and others. Right on!!
I don't want the "best" textbook in a subject any more than I want the "best" editor[0]. "Best" is a really big judgement call.<p>I want "widely accepted as great" or maybe even "good." Great or Good books may not cover exactly the same material, but any given one is likely to cover most of the material (all of the material that author/team considers most important) and avoid mistakes.<p>[0] Vim, Emacs, Sublime2, Sublime3, Atom, VSCode, Scintilla-based stuff, various IDEs, etc.
This book isn't a text book, and doesn't want to be, but for Fourier Analysis, "Who is Fourier? A Mathematical Adventure" provides an introduction to the subject that, IMO, few books can match: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Who-Fourier-Mathematical-Adventure-2nd/dp/0964350432" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Who-Fourier-Mathematical-Adventure-2n...</a>
This will help a little, but if you scour HN, then you get the wisdom of crowds. Today I found a really short succinct book on ASP.net, it was exactly what I was looking for!
surprised not to see morrison and boyd get a mention in the organic chemistry sector, at least as a contender. that was my pick for outstanding textbook across my entire academic career; they just presented the material so much better than i'd seen anyone else do on the topic.
> On business, joshkaufman recommends Kaufman's The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business over Bevelin's Seeking Wisdom and Munger's Poor Charlie's Alamanack.<p>What a rat. Recommends his own book over two others. This is exactly what is wrong with University textbook selection. They're often just picking their friends, or someone who picked their textbook. Crooked and corrupt.