HACKER Q&A
📣 optbuild

Best book to introduce subject X to someone for the first time?


If you were asked to choose a single book to introduce someone to a topic 'X', which book would you choose? You may choose multiple if necessary.

  👤 serf Accepted Answer ✓
'The Annapolis Book of Seamanship' is the de-facto sailing 'bible', in my opinion.

'Machinery's Handbook' is my choice for metalworking.

'Drive to Win' and the other Carrol Smith driving books ('Engineering to Win', 'Tuning to Win') are great for people that want to get into high performance driving.

the 'U.S. Army Field Manual 3-05.70' is a fantastic introduction to survival bushcraft.

GNU's 'Introduction to the Command Line' is good for beginning the life-long journey into *nix CLI expert-dom.

👤 surprisetalk
Guns, Germs, and Steel is the book that made history "click" for me

Borovik's and Gardiner's The Essence of Mathematics Through Elementary Problems is a great technical overview of math

How to Win Friends and Influence People remains the definitive guide on soft-skills

"Let It Rot!" is a good guide to composting

👤 debanjan16
I never loved biology in school. Then I came across this post: https://jsomers.net/i-should-have-loved-biology/

Then I read Machinery of Life by David S. Goodsell https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/6601267

I was just plain amazed that a subject can be presented in such a way.