What Good Technical Books Adorn Your Library?

bluefoxlucid asks: "Lately I've been looking into technical books, and have come to the conclusion that there are a lot of useful books out there containing information that could be useful to me. To my alarm, I've found that many of these titles are not in my local public library! This requires action; I must build my own library, and actually use that bookshelf in my room! But, without a way to sample the books, how should I know which to buy? What (mainly non-fiction) recommendations would you make for anyone who would fall into the Slashdot audience to read?" "Here I present a list of books I have and am looking into buying, with ISBN for each as well; in case anyone wants to know anything about a particular title, the objects I own are accompanied by a '*' while those on order stand next to a '#'. I haven't read all those I own; particularly, I skimmed Silence on the Wire and only read a chapter of Game Design: Secrets of the Sages. These range from

Hobby. These books have hobbyist value, giving tips for making useful things out of other less useful things. These range from ballistics to shoving a survival kit in a watch. Nothing on rail guns, gauss guns, sonic canons, particle accelerators, magnetic drive launchers, ionic wind engines, or any of the other nifty electromagnetic projects you can create; maybe in the future I'll find something.

• The Art of the Catapult (ISBN 1556525265)
• Backyard Ballistics (ISBN 1556523750)
• Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks (ISBN 0596003145)
• Sneaky Uses for Everyday Things (ISBN 0740738593)#
• Sneakier Uses for Everyday Things (ISBN 0740754963)#
• The Unofficial MacGyver How-to Handbook: Revised 2nd Edition (ISBN 1887641475)

Computers, Hacking, Security. These books give technical puzzles or information for programmers and security experts. These include an outdated Assembly book and a Game Design book, just because I had them and programmers and game designers may find use for this information. I should probably find a more up-to-date Assembly book that can be used with gas on Linux.

• 1337 h4x0r h4ndb00k (ISBN 0672327279)
• The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element Of Security (ISBN 076454280X)
• The Art of Intrusion: The Real Stories Behind the Exploits of Hackers, Intruders & Deceivers (ISBN 0764569597)
• Assembler Inside and Out (ISBN 0078818427)*
• Game Design: Secrets of the Sages (ISBN 1575952572)*
• Hacker's Delight (ISBN 0201914654)
• Hacking: The Art of Exploitation (ISBN 1593270070)*
• Programming Challenges (ISBN 0387001638)
• Puzzles for Hackers (ISBN 1931769451)#
• Reversing: Secrets of Reverse Engineering (ISBN 0764574817)
• Silence on the Wire (ISBN 1593270461)*

Mathematics. These books are mathematics related. Actually there's only one here, I was going to throw it in the above section and label it 'Technical' but the Psychology and Neuroscience stuff below is also 'Technical.'

• Statistics Hacks: Tips & Tools for Measuring the World and Beating the Odds (ISBN 0596101643)

Psychology and Neuroscience. These pieces are interesting because they explain the brain and learning, and how to use yours better. They may possibly have been more amusing if written by Q; the authors don't appear to want to remind you that you're primitive beings that can only expand your realm of thinking for fractions of a second at a time. Sadly, they were written by sane individuals and not alien beings who happen to be egomaniacs.

• Mind Hacks (ISBN 0596007795)#
• Mind Performance Hacks: Tips & Tools for Overclocking Your Brain (ISBN 0596101538)#

Humor and Nonsense. Funny stuff only a nerd could enjoy... but you know, if there's ever a Class 4 zombie invasion, you'll be ready. None of this stuff is useful, unless your brain is burning out and you need something to distract you while it relaxes and repairs itself; what better way than to read up on how to enter a burning building or choke a man with your bare thighs?

• The Action Hero's Handbook (ISBN 193168605X)
• The Action Heroine's Handbook (ISBN 1931686688)
• Prank University (ISBN 0307338436)
• The Superman Handbook (ISBN 1594741131)
• The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead (ISBN 1400049628)*

That's it for my list. Surprised? Not only is it short but I actually own only a few of the items that have caught my eye! And yes, all of the humor is from ThinkGeek; that's where I found Hacking: The Art of Exploitation in the first place, which started all this. With the exception of Mind Hacks and The Zombie Survival Guide, none of the '*' and '#' items were found in a library search. I searched on some of the others as well, with no good results. Some of this stuff is in the Library of Congress; but a good number of the ones I searched for weren't.

This leaves my options for discovering new and interesting reads pretty limited—I can buy the books, or harass Slashdot and see if any of you actually have something useful. Rather than try to tailor your responses to me, just go wild; I'm sure anyone in any other technical field besides just programming would appreciate knowing about little gems they'll not find in a library anywhere."

Comments

Smells like desperation

[c0d3h4x0r]

Someone was asked to put together a Christmas list, weren't they?

"Adorn"?

[adavies42]

Someone give you a thesaurus recently?

Algorithms textbook

[frenetic3]

can't go too far without mentioning the canonical algorithms textbook --

Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen, Leiserson and Rivest

i read a ton of business books too -- maybe i'll post some of my favorites in a little bit.

-fren

Re:Algorithms textbook

[El Cubano]

can't go too far without mentioning the canonical algorithms textbook --

Don't forget Stein.

On another note, the authors are awesome. I thought I had found a mistake (or inconsistency) in the book's explanation of an algorithm. I sent an email to the bug reporting address. Within a couple of days Dr. Cormen replied and told me that I was wrong :-) I restated my position and tried to explain to him why I thought the explanation in the text was wrong. He spent a couple of days trading emails with me about it and explaining in detail the rationale for the way it was explained in the book. Anyhow, he finally got me straightened out. I was most impressed since that was the first time I had ever received a reply from the author of a text book about a potential problem I had reported. I was even more impressed when he spent quite a bit of his own time to make sure that I properly understood why the text was correct.

Who could forget...

[Bugs42]

-The Art of Computer Programming - Knuth -The C Programming Language - K&R -Anything from O'Reilly

Re:Who could forget...

[Sangui5]

Second on the Knuth and K&R. Especially the Knuth -- the level of detail is beyond belief. If Knuth has anything about it, he has everything you ever wanted to know about it; like the 15 jillion different ways to do a hash table. K&R unfortunately is covering a fairly simple topic, so it doesn't get used as much (actually, use it for lending more than anything).

Besides Knuth, the book I use the most is "Computer Architecture, A Quantitative Approach", by Hennessy & Patterson, although it isn't adorning my shelf so much as much as my desk. If you care about the architecture side of things at all, Hennessy & Patterson is "the" book; plus the later editions cover relatively modern processors, like P4 Netburst. Not to be confused with Patterson & Hennessy, which is a more introductory book, and not nearly as well written.

A few other goodies are Numerical Recipes in C (for the rare cases when Knuth is lacking), and a lot of books by W. Richard Stevens, William Stallings, and Andrew Tanenbaum.

Re:Who could forget...

[ignavusinfo]

there once was a time when i'd agree with "Anything from O'Reilly" -- nowadays their titles are hit or miss and aimed more at the mid to low tech market rather than in days of old. (and there are real gaps in their library. no really great LDAP books, for instance, and little in the realm of obj-c/cocoa, no updated mod_perl v2 book, little in the way of C, C++ and so on, but lots of annoyance books.)

but on a more upbeat note, along with K&R i'd have to nominate:

• graham's _on lisp_ no matter what language you hack in
• steele's cltl2 as an example of a really well written and highly readable reference,
• singh's _mac os x internals_, if only because it's such a fun read,
• bentley's _programming pearls_, maybe for sentimental reasons,
• friedman & felleisen's _the little lisper_ (now schemer), the book i recommend to non-programmers who want to understand what programming's like.

Sure..

[Dan East]

My favorite is Effective Googling.

Okay, so I made that book up. Anyways, I find myself using hardly any formal reference material at this point (during software development). I used to consult MSDN regularly, and sometimes I still do if Google directs me there.

Dan East

Make magazine

[Noksagt]

The quarterly Make magazine fits nicely with the other hobbyist books.

Amazon has subscriptions and back issues.

Safari

[wikinerd]

Get a Safari subscription.

Libraries order what you ask them too

[majortom1981]

I work at a library and We order books that you ask so if you have a book in mind ask and we will order it. This will be a fun topic to read since there will be a lot of misinformation on it.

Reference Books

[Noksagt]

Pocket Ref has been lauded as a "shirtpocket database of tech info" It has an amazing number of diverse charts and tables for unit conversion, materials properties, standards used by different countries, etc. Combine that with a book of engineering formulas (like this one) and you're set.

A few suggestions

[MythMoth]

I've tried to keep these sufficiently un-obvious that you might not have them. Hopefully I've succeeded with most of them, though Penrose and Brookes works are well known - though nothing like as well known as they should be.

The Inventions of Daedalus
The Further Inventions of Daedalus
These two books are just fabulous. The author, David E. H. Jones comes up with far fetched inventions, immaculately thought through and presented. Sometimes they then come true - he predicted buckyballs rather handily, for example. The books are collections of his columns for Nature and other publications, with additional notes and cartoons. Absolutely lovely, but sadly out of print - you'll have to snap up second hand copies quick. I'd love it if Jones did a new edition, or better yet another book!

The Emperor's New Mind - Roger Penrose.
An exposition of weak AI, but taking in computer science and particle physics. Pretty epic, though I have trouble with his conclusions.

The Man Who Knew Too Much - Stephen Inwood.
A life of Robert Hooke, a multi-talented scientist of the 17th century. Fascinating insight into the perspective of a friend or acquaintance of Newton, Christopher Wren, and Edmund Halley.

Mind Children - Hans Moravec
Musings on the future of robot and human intelligence, with particular thoughts about how we might "upload" our minds to computers. Not as silly a book as I make it sound, I think.

The Mythical Man Month - Fred Brookes
The truth about project management. Written in 1975 and we still haven't learnt.

Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming (Case Studies in Common Lisp) - Peter Norvig
Lots of hands on stuff, plenty of examples, and a good introduction to Lisp into the bargain. I loved it at college, and I've just bought myself a copy after all these years (the Library at University didn't see their copy very often while I was there).

Hacking Matter - Wil McCarthy (not a typo, it really is "Wil")
This is great, but I have to say I didn't enjoy it quite as much as the entertaining semi-humorous science fiction novel The Collapsium that's based to a large part around the more speculative parts of this non-fiction book. But regardless, it opened my eyes to a number of possibilities; even if they come to naught I appreciate his voice on the subject.

Thanks for the excellent question - I'll enjoy reading the other contributions to this thread.

Re:A few suggestions

[jthill]

The Emperor's New Mind - Roger Penrose.

Bah. The man fell for the chestnut about neurons not understanding Chinese. He understands physics, not computers, but even so he should have been able to see that trick for what it is.

A few in the "Computers" category:

[dextromulous]

I saw TAOCP and K&R mentioned already, so here's a couple more from the bookshelf:

• Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment - Stevens
• Unix Network Programming - Stevens
• Computer Networks - Tanenbaum

Lame List

[Usquebaugh]

I was thinking of all the books I've collected over the years for reference including Knuth, Tufte, SICP, SICM etc etc Maybe some early texts Plato, Aristole, Socrates, Newton etc Or early computer papers Turing, Church, Shannon etc etc What do I find on the list a bunch of how to books, that is how to with little or no understanding. (Bleh)

To the OP put down these comics and go and research something to first principles, just one interesting subject e.g. gunpowder or steel or calculus. Find out not only how the stuff is made today and in the past, but also the reasons for the change the people involved, who was the monk who first wrote it down in the western world and why were the chinese ahead of us. The chemistry and the physics involved, how much gunpowder do you need to knock down a wall vs. how much gasoline. To get a good foundation should take no longer than three months of daily application. At the end of which you'll know a lot about gunpowder but also a lot more about how to find and use information to garner knowledge. The latter is far more valuble skill than what's available in the how to for dummies.

The idea is that you don't stop at one subject but you take an interest in something related e.g. machining or poisons. This leads to other areas. Each time you'll reach understanding a little quicker. After a year or so any new subject should be childs play for you to grasp and manipulate.

Some favorites

[Scarblac]

Programming:

1. The Pragmatic Programmer, from Journeyman to Master: guide to being a professional software developer, covers a lot
2. Code Complete: how to craft a little bit of code; stuff like naming, indentation, etc. I read the 2nd edition which was great, the 3rd is reputed to be better.
3. Refactoring: giving a name to "improving existing code little by little", something we do every day; I found this a much more accessible first book to get into "High Church OO" than, say, Design Patterns.

Other:

1. Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition: enthusiastic stories about scientific hubris
2. The Making of the Atomic Bomb: good history
3. The Colossal Book of Short Puzzles and Problems: got this as a birthday present, it's brilliant
4. Fiction by Neil Gaiman or Connie Willis
5. If you are into really far looking SF, fiction by Greg Egan
6. If you like unorthodox fantasy, fiction by China Mieville

Chess, why not:

1. The King, by Donner

Among the best on my shelf are...

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Lectures on Riemann Surfaces, RC Gunning (Best book I've read on Riemann surfaces.)
On Numbers and Games, J Conway (You know the strategy for Nim. This is that on acid.)
Enumerative Combinatorics I & II, Stanley (Everything you need to know about counting.)
Quantum Field Theory, Ryder (This is where I learned much of what I know.)
Differential Forms in Algebraic Topology, Bott & Tu (A masterpiece of clarity.)
Introduction to Algorithms, Cormen, Leiserson & Rivest (I thought I knew it all until I read this!)
The Blackwell Guide to Philosophical Logic, Goble (How many logics are there? More than you think.)
QED, Feynman (I'm lying, it's not on my shelf, I forgot who I lent it to. Eschew all QM books until you've read this.)
Categories for the Working Mathematician, MacLane. (I'm lying again. It's too expensive, but it should be on my shelf...)
Thinking Forth, Brodie. (Forth is the most beautiful programming language ever...after Haskell.)
A First Course in General Relativity, Schutz. (I swear I understood this stuff 20 years ago, but age takes its toll...)

Helping make sense of the world

[GuyMannDude]

Since you list humorous books, I'm not sure what your definition of "technical" is. I'll assume you meant "non-fiction". Here's a few titles that are recommended for anyone who has a brain and wants to think hard about the state of the world.

• Books by Edward Tufte on how graphs, PowerPoint presentations, and other sources of technical information can mislead rather than inform (and how to correct this).
• _A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper_ or any other books by John Allen Paulos which focus on how a misunderstanding of mathematics has consequences for our society.
• The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan.
• On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society by West Point psychologist, military historian, and former Army Ranger Lt. Col. Grossman. Anyone who thinks that they would be able to "do what must be done" and kill anyone who threatened their family ought to read this. Also recommended reading for all the hawks out there that are so anxious to send our young out to fight unnecessary wars.

GMD

My library

[Anonymous Coward]

• Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools. This book is no joke.
• Numerical Recipes in C has saved me a lot of time over the past few years.
• An Embedded Software Primer. When I had a bug up my ass about creating my own computer, this was a great help.
• I often refer to some second-hand math and english textbooks. They've been invaluable to me, but maybe I'm dumb.

Some advice

• I wasted a signifigant portion of my youth hacking. Don't bother. It's not interesting.
• O'Reilly books are basically collections of tips for helpless novices. If you really want to the learn the principles of something, avoid them like the plague.
• Overclocking your brain? Come on.

As a Librarian...

[Anonymous Coward]

...I urge you to check into whether or not your library accepts requests if you haven't already.

Also, many academic libraries are open to the public. I actually have a colleague that works in your local library system, If I can find her email address I'll bring this to her attention.

If not that, find out if your library offers interlibrary loan services or check out if there is anything available at open WorldCat. [worldcat.org] Perhaps someplace within reasonable driving distance will have it. (I realize this all assumes you will go to the same lengths I will to not spend a buck)

We (as a profession) really do try to get you everything you need free of charge. Unfortunately, we can't always get every item people want, but letting us know what you'd like helps.

An ASCII Chart

[SurturZ]

I have an old extended ASCII table that I scanned in about a decade ago and reprint on a regular basis. Over the years I've added other stuff to it (hexadecimal conversion tables, colour tables etc).

It's getting a bit less useful in these Unicode days, but it is the longest lived technical document I still use.

"Mainly non-fiction"

[Malfourmed]

The Dilbert Principle takes pride of place in the management & business section of my personal library; more true-to-life, and certainly more readable, than the Porter, Senge, Schwartz and Peters tracts gathering dust next to it.

Essential reference tools

[Macgrrl]

The Australian Oxford Dictionary
ISBN: 0195517962

The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition
William Strunk Jr., E. B. White, Roger Angell (Foreword)
ISBN: 020530902X

Most of my business communications are written - making these tools essential.

Re:Knuth and K&R are old, tired and lame

[linguae]

The only worthwhile part of Knuth's work is the first book on sorting, and even then it is dry. Just because he can sling nasty formulas around when comparing algorithms doesn't mean a lot. These days we are using hardware that resemble DSPs and locality of reference problems can outweigh counting the number of multiplies by a long shot. Just learning O notation, what is an L2 cache miss and *to actually profile your code* instead of theorizing about it is much more important. His formulas aren't relevant on modern hardware.

The Art of Computer Programming is about algorithm analysis and development, not about computer architecture (caching) or software development (profiling). TAOCP, combined with Concrete Mathematics, the MIT algorithms book, and a good text on combinatorial algorithms should be more than enough to satisfy the needs of a computer scientist or seasoned software developer who needs all of the good algorithms that he or she can get. TAOCP isn't a book about all of computer science, but it isn't trying to be one either.

The K&R's C Programming Language is only useful to people who already know C. And C is such a small language that you shouldn't need a reference book once you know it. However, if you are a language geek and like that kind of thing, get the actual C standard and read it. Seriously, it isn't that big.

K&R is a useful book for C reference; in fact, I consider it as an explanation to the C standard. I refer to K&R, not necessarily the standard, for reference whenever I am stuck on a certain C concept. (Compiler construction is different; you should follow the standard to the letter). There is a reason why the K&R book hasn't been updated since 1989; other than C99 extensions, the book is a very good explanation of C as is. I learned C largely from this book (although, to be fair, I used an O'Reilly book to learn the basics of C before taking a class that used C. The professor in that class didn't assign a book, so I sought out the best book according to ratings: K&R. My book is worn out out of 2 years of use, but I love it).

Re:UPT from O'Reilly

[Scarblac]

The main reason is that +- 10 years ago, O'Reilly's books were great and Wrox and Sams were unknown (did they exist?). Nowadays, O'Reilly's lineup has been diluted by a long list of mediocre titles, and there are a lot of other good publishers of tech books.