This is a place to consolidate book recommendations.
I'm reading The Logic of Failure and enjoying it quite a bit. I wasn't sure whether I'd heard of it here, and I found a post here called Great Books of Failure, an article which hadn't crossed my path before.
There's a recent thread about books for a gifted young teen and a slightly less recent discussion of books on cogsci thread which might or might not be found by someone looking for good books.
So, what books or lists of books do you recommend?
Wow, can't wait for the unknown gems this discussion will bring up!
Anyway, some of my own; these are all non-fiction.
Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene is such a magnificent book, introducing all the
wonderful solutions that evolution has come up with, and the insight that the
battle for the 'survival of the fittest' takes place at the level of
individual genes (or is at least a powerful model for understanding things)
Jared Diamonds' Guns, germs and steel which suggests that there are
non-racial/non-ethnic reasons for the differences in wealth and power amongst
various regions in the world. I think the writer's claims go a bit further
than his evidence warrants, but nevertheless a good way to look into this
field, and provides a lot of food for thought
As mentioned already, Hofstadters Gödel/Escher/Bach and The Mind's I
(bundle of essays of various writers, redacted together with Daniel Dennett)
are playing with all these interesting concepts like conciousness, AI, meta,
self-reference.
Also Richard Feynman's work is fantastic -- the auto-biographic (You must
be joking, Mr. Feynman and What do you care what other people think) are
inspiring. I plan on going through some of his real physics works (like the
Feynman lectures on Physics). Just seeing some of the interviews on Youtube
show how well Feynman is able to make both complex and simple things understandable, at all levels; such a towering intellect.
For computer science stuff, earlier I mentioned
SICP, which I am currently re-reading.
Then, Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming; I have read much too little
of it, but it's such a rewarding experience to (slowly!) go through a few
pages and finally the 'click' of understanding. I plan to read more of
this. Knuth is truly the master of the field of programming and algorithms,
and while reading it, I can almost feel how it sharpens my brain.
Finally, a lot of bad things can be said about pop-psy, but I really liked
Dan Ariely's books (Predictably irrational and The upside of
irrationality) that show where the classical picture of people being
rational, homo economicus, has its limitations, and all the weird biases
we have. He has someinteresting TED-talks as well.
Voted up for The Selfish Gene. I really like the way Dawkins looks at the world. It's a good illustration that innovation can be very low-tech -- he got a revolutionary idea just by reading about birds and monkeys and thinking a little bit.
1Jonathan_Graehl
SICP, Selfish Gene, Feynman esp. Lectures on Physics are all great.
TAOCP - I've read 1 volume only. It's unfortunate that he used assembly code rather than psuedocode. The material he's recently released on permutations/combinations/partitions/etc. is beautiful. I expect there are better, more concise surveys available now, but I doubt anyone will beat the quantity and quality of his problems (with solutions).
GEB was entertaining. I've been meaning to reread it to see if it still impresses me or if it's really just virtuoso hand-waving.
Mind's I didn't leave much of an impression on me.
This is a place to consolidate book recommendations.
I'm reading The Logic of Failure and enjoying it quite a bit. I wasn't sure whether I'd heard of it here, and I found a post here called Great Books of Failure, an article which hadn't crossed my path before.
There's a recent thread about books for a gifted young teen and a slightly less recent discussion of books on cogsci thread which might or might not be found by someone looking for good books.
So, what books or lists of books do you recommend?