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Texts for Autodidacts?

Posted by Cliff on from the reading-up-on-LOTS-of-subjects dept.

RestiffBard asks: "I'm in a bit of a learning slump and was wondering what books or websites Slashdot readers would recommend for learning anything. I'm looking more for general starter texts on physics, math, chemistry, electronics, etc. I'm not too interested in computer texts as I have that mostly down now. I'm more interested in the sciences that I've neglected in the last few years."

4 of 25 comments (clear)

  1. Asimov! by sysadmn · · Score: 2, Informative

    Anything written by Isaac Asimov. The physics will be a bit dated, but the chemistry and engineering haven't changed as much. And the history of science hasn't changed at all :-) Even his guide to the Bible and the Homeric epics are good intros to those periods of history. I'm not to sure about that psychohistory stuff - check again in about 3000 years.

    --
    Envy my 5 digit Slashdot User ID!
  2. Mathematics by sohp · · Score: 2, Informative
    Here are a couple of sites I have in my bookmarks for learning about math. Hope this helps!
  3. Project Gutenberg by PhilHibbs · · Score: 3, Informative

    http://promo.net/pg/
    Useful for older texts, so no cutting-edge genetics or nanotech here, but this collection would round off your education in general, especially the classics if you're that way inclined.

  4. Online Electronics, and other stuff by RGRistroph · · Score: 1, Informative
    Ibiblio hosts some online textbooks:

    http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/electricCircuits/

    Here is a partial list of books published online, that I happened to like enough to bookmark. I find that reading a book on the computer screen is tedious, I mostly use the online version as a reference.

    Handbook of applied cryptography: http://www.cacr.math.uwaterloo.ca/hac/

    Underground: (I actually haven't read this yet) http://www.underground-book.com/

    Netizens: (only partly read this) http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/

    http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/crypto/crypto/army.fi eld.manual/

    Big Breach: http://www.antioffline.com/bigbreach/

    The Prof's Book: http://frode.home.cern.ch/frode/crypto/Turing/inde x.html

    I have a lot of other links also, but my bookmarks have become so nested and folderized that many are lost in there, I really need bookmarks for my bookmarks . . . Anyway, I would suggest that if you find yourself looking for interesting reading online, you will find plenty. If you choose you can find scanned in pdf's of various works on newsgroups and in freenet, etc.

    However, my advice is to use the 'net primarily as a way to figure out what to read, and become familar with the local public library. Almost all libraries have inter-library loans which give you access to huge amount of stuff. When I can't get a work that way, I fall back upon checking databases of used bookstore inventories -- http://abe.com/ and http://powellsbooks.com/ are the places I generally go to.