If you could have only 3 textbooks which one would you pick?

[pier4r]

Let's make some categories.

- 3 Textbooks about STEM and hard sciences.
- 3 Textbooks about humanities and everything else but STEM and hard sciences.
- 3 Textbooks in general (all subjects).
- 3 Non-fiction books (all subjects).

Source of inspiration: https://twitter.com/fermatslibrary/statu...3784395779

[KeithB]

Advanced Engineering Mathematics by Wylie
MicroElectronics by Millman
C: A reference Manual Harbison and Steele

[Nigel (UK)]

Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volumes 1, 2, and 3.

Nigel (UK)

[rprosperi]

(02-09-2023 05:14 PM)KeithB Wrote:  Advanced Engineering Mathematics by Wylie

Assume that's by author Kreyszig? I agree, great book.

[klesl]

Bird’s Comprehensive Engineering Mathematics
HRW Physics
The Flying Circus of Physics by Jearl Walker

[Garth Wilson]

I've spent very little time in textbooks over the decades, but I'll mention these:

• Math Toolkit For Real-Time Programming, by Jack Crenshaw
• High-Speed Digital Design—A Handbook of Black Magic, by Dr. Howard Johnson (although much of it is just a compilation of articles he had in one of the industry magazines, many of which I cut out and kept anyway.  The book gets further into the math though.)
• IC Op Amp Cookbook, 3rd Ed., by Walter Jung, with lots of ideas

A book I've loaned out to several newbies (and it seldom comes back, so I buy another one on eBay) is Understanding Solid-State Electronics, from the TI Learning Center.  The first one I had was sold by Radio Shack and had RS's cover on it.  It presents the ideas with almost no math.

When our company went to surface-mount, the boss bought me the book "SMT High-Density Design & DFM," by James C. Blankenhorn, from SMT Plus, Inc., which was hundreds of dollars IIRC.  Wow, their idea of "high density" is pretty lame!

[EdS2]

Considering this as 'which 3 non-fiction books would you take to your desert island' (rather than 'which 3 books will help you re-bootstrap civilisation when all is lost') I think I'd go for

Structured Computer Organization by Andrew Tanenbaum
Winning Ways for Your Mathematical Plays by Elwyn R. Berlekamp, John H. Conway, and Richard K. Guy
Gravitation by Charles W. Misner, Kip S. Thorne, John Archibald Wheeler

(Although I do have a great fondness for Art of Electronics by Horowitz and Hill, and I have an aspirational possession of Knuth's Art of Computer Programming.)

[born2laser]

I think you'll get a different answer from every nerd you ask...

Principles of Optics by Max Born and Emil Wolf
Lasers by Anthony Siegman
Art of Electronics by Horowitz and Hill

[lrdheat]

More for interested lay audience, but wonderful books:

Powers of Ten (About the Relative Size of Things in the Universe) by Ray Eames and Philip and Phylis Morrison 1982 Scientific American Library

Lady Luck (The Theory of Probability) by Warren Weaver Dover 1982 (original edition in 1963

Climates of the Continents by W. G. Kendrew Oxford Forth Edition 1953

[Thomas Klemm]

(02-13-2023 02:54 AM)lrdheat Wrote:  Powers of Ten (About the Relative Size of Things in the Universe) by Ray Eames and Philip and Phylis Morrison 1982 Scientific American Library

Somewhat related: Metric Paper by CGP Grey

[KeithB]

(02-09-2023 11:25 PM)rprosperi Wrote:  

(02-09-2023 05:14 PM)KeithB Wrote:  Advanced Engineering Mathematics by Wylie

Assume that's by author Kreyszig? I agree, great book.

No, it is by C. Ray Wylie.
It is published by McGraw Hill. 8^)

[rprosperi]

(02-13-2023 01:43 PM)KeithB Wrote:  

(02-09-2023 11:25 PM)rprosperi Wrote:  Assume that's by author Kreyszig? I agree, great book.

No, it is by C. Ray Wylie.
It is published by McGraw Hill. 8^)

Thanks. I have one with the same time, author is Kreyszig but the Publisher is Wiley, which is why I asked. I think that's a brief moment of dyslexia... on my part.

[JimP]

This could cross a number of different categories here -- mine reflect many years of working in the pharmaceutical industry (as well as a healthy dose of cynicism).

1) Organic Chemistry (Morrison and Boyd) -- the standard undergraduate (but also vital for post-graduate use) textbook for all things related to the cornerstone of drug synthesis.

2) The Merck Index -- standard tome on all things pharmaceutical, including drugs themselves, biological targets, etc.

3) "The Clot Thickens" by Dr. Malcolm Kendrick. A brilliant and occasionally humorous treatise, supported by well-researched clinical data and statistics, on the true causes and factors of cardiovascular disease. Spoiler: it isn't "cholesterol" -- it never was. Also he illustrates, with clinical justification, the virtually complete lack of utility of statins (another spoiler -- they have no effect on mortality or indeed any significant effect on cardiovascular events -- you have to treat 100 people for five years to prevent a single heart attack or stroke -- but it doesn't stop foolish physicians who swallow the party line without question, from drinking the Kool-Aid (ie feeding the Large Pharma cash cow!)

[pier4r]

(02-13-2023 01:06 AM)born2laser Wrote:  I think you'll get a different answer from every nerd you ask...

Principles of Optics by Max Born and Emil Wolf
Lasers by Anthony Siegman
Art of Electronics by Horowitz and Hill

that's great, because assuming that every nerd proposes very good books, then one can explore those as well and thus expand one's library if needed.

For this I was hoping in the other categories (beside the initial one), to get more of an overview. Anyway those other categories didn't raise any interest.

[Maximilian Hohmann]

Hello!

(02-14-2023 08:32 PM)pier4r Wrote:  Anyway those other categories didn't raise any interest.

I really haven't read any textbook since I left university and that was 35 (or so) years ago. There is not a single one I can really remember and therefore no three that I would pick even if I had to.

But memorable non-fiction books there are quite a few. Here are three that I certainly will read again (and maybe even a third time):

- André Turcat: Concorde, essais et battailles (https://www.amazon.de/-/en/gp/product/27...bl_vppi_i3) - about developing and flight testing the Concorde. To my knowledge it was only ever published in french language.
- David A. Mindell: Digital Apollo: Human and machine in spaceflight (https://www.amazon.de/Digital-Apollo-Hum...0262516101)
- Tom Wolfe: The Right Stuff (https://www.amazon.de/Right-Stuff-Tom-Wo...0553275569)

And, because it was mentioned above, if I had to take textbooks to an inhabited island, one would be about survival in the wilderness, the second about shipbuilding and the third about self-medication with ready made tools and chemicals :-) (I never read books from these departments and therefore can't recommend any).

Regards
Max

[Didier Lachieze]

The three non-fiction books I would pick to read or re-read :
- Voyage of the Beagle - Charles Darwin
- Essais - Michel de Montaigne
- Une histoire des mathématiques - Amy Dahan-Dalmedico, Jeanne Peiffer