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[Sleepy]

I would seriously recommend against someone wandering into Butler head-first.

Well, yeah, but the OP asked for required reading...Or did I miss the part where I needed to put a year? And you didn't mention Derrida, who is much, much worse than Butler.

 

[FloppyDelux]

Anatomy drawing/study:


Human Anatomy for Artists: The Elements of Form - http://www.amazon.com/dp/0195052064/?tag=neogaf0e-20

Figure Drawing for All It's Worth -http://www.amazon.com/Figure-Drawing-All-Its-Worth/dp/0857680986/ref=sr_1_17?ie=UTF8&qid=1335028220&sr=8-17


Figure Drawing: Design and Invention - http://www.amazon.com/dp/0615272819/?tag=neogaf0e-20


Animation:

The Animator's Survival Kit- http://www.amazon.com/dp/0571238343/?tag=neogaf0e-20

 

[persongr]

Computer Science

What do you guys think about Introduction to Algorithms book? From what I gathered online, it was the go to book for algorithms.

It is the best book when it comes to algorithms

So, OP may add to Computer Science:

Introduction to Algorithms, 3rd Edition - Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson, Ronald L. Rivest and Clifford Stein

 

[Randdalf]

Computer Science
The Art Of Computer Programming by Donald E. Knuth
I'm told this one is incredibly influential.

I'd also add that any book about fundemental algorithms is pretty much superseded by this one.

 

[FutureZombie]

Nice OP. Possibly the best ever idea for a thread.

 

[Cyan]

What level are we talking about here? High schooler? Informed lay-person? Expert? Are we talking about autodidacts or people who have access to schooling? There are sections like philosophy and political science and sociology... and, well, frankly most of them, where I wouldn't recommend most of the primary "seminal texts" for someone who is self-starting. Instead, I'd recommend secondary texts that help contextualize the primary texts. On the other hand, if we're talking at a graduate level, readers would probably want to read the primary texts at that point.

It'd be great if people posting could distinguish between seminal texts and books that are must-reads as far as learning a field.

Regardless of how it turns out, you probably ought to include "Godel, Escher, Bach"--Crunched mentions it above--under Linguistics, Computer Science, and Philosophy. You probably ought to include "Flatland" under mathematics.

Word.

 

[The Technomancer]

Yeah, my recommendations have definitely been more for laypeople without particular expertise in the field.

Goedel Escher Back is an amazing read but some of the initial set theory stuff it throws at you can be bamboozling if you don't know the vocabulary.

 

[Aylinato]

polticial science

the republic
the prince

 

[Learn2read]

Music (a split from stories about musicians and musical theory might be in order)

This Wheel's on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of the Band - Levon Helm (RIP you great man)

Shakey: Neil Young's Biography - James McDonough

Chronicles - Bob Dylan

 

[Snowman Prophet of Doom]

I get your points, Stump, but there are some autodidacts (like myself) that would rather just jump into the primary texts and neither want nor need contextualizing, at least for stuff in the humanities. I mean, reading that Judith Butler article you posted, for example I don't really identify anything in the writing or the ideas that is all that different from any other Feminist writer that I can think of, and I don't see anything that makes me feel lost, despite not being a third-year women's studies major or anything like that.

 

[dinazimmerman]

All the economics books I posted can be read by laypeople with the right mathematical prerequisites, which I added information about in my post. The book by Mas-Colell, Whinston, and Green is read by every doctoral student in economics, so it is "seminal" in that sense. Pathbreaking, cutting-edge research in economics has been published exclusively in journal articles for the last few decades, so in reality, there are no "seminal" books in modern economics. But to be able to understand journal articles, reading the right textbooks first is absolutely necessary.

 

[Freeza Under The Shower]

Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud should be a mandatory read for anyone interested in visual media.
(film, games, art, possibly even writing)

Psychology / neurology / (math):
Mind comes to Self by Antonio Damasio
I am a Strange loop by Douglas Hofstadter

antropology / religion:
science, magic and religion by Bronislaw Malinowski
Purity and Danger by Mary Douglas

sociology / cultural studies:
the Easternization of the West by Colin Campbell
the mcDonalization of society by George Ritzer

and if you like the really big ones: The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change by Randall Collins

just a few options.

 

[dark_chris]

This has caught my attention. Anything for psychology will be appreciated. =)
Subscribed.

 

[demon]

For an in-depth intro to Philosophy, how do people feel here abotu Copleston's History of Philosphy? The one that's like 12 volumes long.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_History_of_Philosophy_(Copleston)

 

[Godslay]

Code Complete by Steve McConnell

CLRS is a great book if you really want to dig in, but not very approachable for a beginner.

The same goes for the Art of Computer Programming.

 

[Pollux]

It appears to be a combination, but leaning towards the former. And yes, I agree; I was hoping for more utility out of this thread. :/

Actually it's for every level. What I'll do is break each topic down and then put the different books where they belong, so I'm not going to put a book like Man, the State, and War in the Basic/Introductory section of the International Relations topic. That would go in either Intermediate or Complex.

I'll update the OP to include instructions to post whether the books is for beginners, those with a basic knowledge in a subject, or those who have extensive knowledge. Beginner, Intermediate, and Expert.

 

[Freeza Under The Shower]

I get your points, Stump, but there are some autodidacts (like myself) that would rather just jump into the primary texts and neither want nor need contextualizing, at least for stuff in the humanities. I mean, reading that Judith Butler article you posted, for example I don't really identify anything in the writing or the ideas that is all that different from any other Feminist writer that I can think of, and I don't see anything that makes me feel lost, despite not being a third-year women's studies major or anything like that.

gotta start somewhere. Might as well just go for some introductory works and the big ones to see how far you can get at first.

Anything by Malcolm Gladwell is a good enough introduction into some basic sociology, for instance.

But if you want to go a bit further, the field of cultural sociology is lot more inviting to 'lay' readers but can get very complicated very fast. The previously mentioned book by Campbell is really hardcore for instance, despite being a 'must read'.
A little more readable book would be The Conquest of Cool by Thomas Frank, which deals with how the counterculture has since become the dominant culture through business.
Generation ME (psychology) by Jean Twenge and Therapy Culture (sociology) by Frank Furedi have clear links to this premise when they refer to the "yeah right" attitude or the political apathy of modern young people, but never refer to it directly.


Most autodidactic reading is re-reading, as far as I'm concerned. I knew nothing about sociology when I read the McDonalization of society, but I've happily referenced it many times over the years.

Similarly: the death of the critic by Rowan McDonald deals in the heavy stuff of critical theories and their effects, but is just as readable if you don't know (yet) what all that stuff is exactly.

Proper understanding takes years or lots of reading anyway. Consider the philosophical terms of realism and idealism, for instance. Most people just take those 'as is' and think that's the end of it, when the proper meaning is quite different, as it refers to the "reality" of language directly representing 'the real' or... and so on.


Point being that there's no point in holding back from difficult stuff, but reading "around it" before taking it on is a good tactic to get there eventually. Well, for me anyway.

 

[Kraut]

For Physics, Brian Greene's Elegant Universe and Kip Thorne's Black Holes and Time Warps are great layman's introductions to string theory and concepts of modern physics.

 

[Learn2read]

My favorite science book: The Whole Shebang

Don't know why it didn't catch on while A Brief History of Time and An Elegant Universe did, I prefer it greatly to the two. They all tread the same waters btw.

 

[zoku88]

For Computer Science: Patterson and Hennesey is pretty important.

If you want to lump Quantum Computation under CS (which it could be, or math): Quantum Computation and Quantum Information by Nielsen and Chuang seems to be widely used.

For whatever section you posted Annals in, A History of Rome by Livy would be nice, too.

If we're adding requirements:

Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach by Patterson and Hennesey could probably be read by a layperson.

The quantum computation one... one would at least to be good with linear algebra.

 

[sparky2112]

Doing some history waaay off the top of my head (and I could go on and on about American history, but I'll stick to the broad stuff for now):

The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman (won the Pulitzer (I think?) and was supposedly the book Kennedy was reading during the Cuban Missle Crisis that helped pull him back to reality)
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon (or, insert your favorite modern version of same here)
The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes (won the Pulitzer and who also wrote about the hydrogen bomb as well)

 

[DS-61-5]

Politics (I don't like the term "political science", as it assumes a level of precision and predictability that I am wary of attributing to anything as varied and unpredictable as human behaviour). I also am a bit populist in thinking that good work, at least in the humanities, ought to generally bridge the gap between specialists/professionals and intelligent autodidacts. To that end, books on my list are intended for both audiences.

Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville

The best book ever written about America, but I would say also about the tendencies and traits of democratic polities, both governments and societies. As I tell my fellow polisci graduate students and even my adviser, this book makes our profession redundant- it's all been said.

Honourable mention to his Old Regime and the French Revolution, but I agree with Stumpakow that many books require background knowledge: Old Regime [like Burke, another essential], would be one such instance, since it assumes familiarity with 18th century France. Democracy in America doesn't require much beyond basic cultural background knowledge that most Americans already have. Europeans should also find it accessible; after all, Tocqueville was writing the book as a guide to America for Frenchmen.

The Federalist Papers [at least selections from them; many are just very specific to particular complaints being lodged against the federal Constitution.] There is a reason Madison's work is considered the zenith of America's contribution to political theory. As they were written for newspaper reading audiences, not professionals, they are a nice balance between subtle and approachable, with, for example, nice distillations of Montesquieu.

Politics by Aristotle.
The Prince, by Machiavelli. One should be cognizant of the fact Machiavelli was a devout republican currying favour with an autocrat, and thus ease off on judging him as a proto-totalitarian, but as analysis of the politics of human psychology it's hard to beat.
On Liberty, by Mill

Ditto others' recommendations for the three above. Would vehemently disagree on The Republic, at least as a first cut to be confronted alone.

History (American History)

Empire of Liberty (1789-1815), Gordon Wood.
Rise of American Democracy (1815-1860), Sean Wilentz.

Both are fine stand-alone, synthetic treatments of their eras- coffee table books, in effect. They are long, and with lots of material, but they are explicitly designed as introductions for non-specialists, but are subtle and important enough that they are go-to references for professionals in the field.

 

[erpg]

Roman Engineering: Roman Aqueducts and Water Supply by A. Trevor Hodge.

 

[Tzeentch]

Landscape Genetics : Allendorf and Luikart. Conservation and the Genetics of Population. Great book even if you are a bit of a noob on the genetics side of thing.

Environmental Theory/History : Glacken. Traces on the Rhodian Shore. WARNING very very dense book.

 

[Asuma01]

Horticulture: Marijuana Grow Basics: The Easy Guide for Cannabis Aficionados Author: Jorge Cervantes

 

[hiredhand]

Earth Sciences:
Understanding Earth - Grotzinger & Jordan (older edtions Grotzinger, Jordan, Press & Siever)
A great introductory text on all things geology.

 

[Hasan]

for linguistics: http://books.google.com.pk/books/about/An_Introduction_to_Language.html?id=0BhzqFratIAC&redir_esc=y

literaty studies: http://books.google.com.pk/books?id...a=X&ei=VCqTT7m_MMWSswaA4MGlBA&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA

Middle Eastern: http://books.google.com.pk/books?id...A&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=taliban&f=false

 

[Cubsfan23]

psychics

 

[OneEightZero]

Linguistics (Cognitive Semantics):
Metaphors We Live By (George Lakoff and Mark Johnson)
Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About The Mind (George Lakoff)

I'll post more later.

 

[Atramental]

subbed.

 

[Meus Renaissance]

International Relations & Foreign Policy: History

Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris and Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis by Ian Kershaw

Philisophy / Cultural Studies

A Freedom of History of Thought by John Bagnell Bury

 

[Pollux]

Three new main categories have been added to the OP...1) Engineering 2)Law/Legal Studies 3) Writing

 

[Attackthebase]

Strunk and White's The Elements of Style is essential in understanding the English language and how to properly use the it. Toss this bad boy under 'Writing.'

 

[beelzebozo]

i will pretty much never be without something to read from now on.

 

[grumble]

Why no section for business?

 

[viciouskillersquirrel]

I don't know what to recommend for engineering, really. Even Electrical Engineering taken by itself in isolation is such a broad field that the "required reading" changes according to what industry you're working in. The dudes working at Intel aren't going to be using the same knowledge base as the guys at Alcatel or anyone in the nuclear power industry. But, I will have a crack:

Electrical & Electronic Technology by Hughes et al. - This is a basic primer for anyone working as an electrical engineer. Haven't looked at DC motors, MEN earthing or fault calculations in power systems since university and have forgotten how they work? This book is for you. To be fair, this book assumes a great deal of engineering and physics knowledge on the part of the reader, so it may not be the best thing to read if you're a student learning the topics for the first time, but once you've started working, you will always want to keep it with you.

IEC 60079 - Electrical Installations in Hazardous Areas - This is the bible if you're working with hazardous areas (explosive atmospheres) anywhere in the world. Has applications in the oil/gas industry, agriculture and mining, although coal mining has its own set of supplementary standards.

As a side note, I don't know why anyone would recommend On the Origin of Species as "required reading". It is exceedingly stodgy and outdated, being over a hundred years old.

 

[tborsje]

While I'd recommend both books for exactly the reason you mention, I'd also not recommend them to anyone who just wandered in to the subject. Typically when these works are taught, they're taught in a course that's already went through IR in the cold war (bipolar, containment, etc), and then they contextualize the collapse of the soviet union and the emerging world order of the 90s. So I think it does someone a disservice to just pick these up, read them, and internalize them.

I mean this is a fundamental problem here--you have people in this thread who are largely not autodidacts, who were largely taught by professors who gave everything a good context and within programs that ensured a good progression of knowledge... and yet the works are being recommended to people who may or may not be in the same situation.

Certainly, but in a field as divided as international politics I'd say that you could apply that to any work from the field. But the value in those books I mentioned (to me at least) is that you can see the effects of both in the language and behaviour of statesmen, diplomats and the like everyday. You can gain a real insight into how the Bush Jr-era neocons saw the world by reading Huntington, and you can better understand the idealism you see in institutions like the EU and UN by reading Fukuyama. Of course, applying just those works to the crazy world of international politics greatly simplifies things, but those books are as good as any others.

I'm also seeing a lot of people suggesting Renaissance-era works in this thread. Leviathan and The Prince are essential reading, but I'd be practically impossible for a layman to pick them up and learn anything about sovereignty and statehood (if not for the simple reason that they're written in an older dialect of the English language)! I have a politics degree and I can barely read Leviathan - it's probably better to get a good textbook that breaks down what Hobbesian notions of security and sovereignty means if one wants to actually gain anything from them.

 

[persongr]

I don't know what to recommend for engineering, really. Even Electrical Engineering taken by itself in isolation is such a broad field that the "required reading" changes according to what industry you're working in. The dudes working at Intel aren't going to be using the same knowledge base as the guys at Alcatel or anyone in the nuclear power industry.

Malvino's Electronic Principle (7th Edition) covers some of the basics.

But it is not suitable for those who want to get familiar with basic circuits and their laws (Kirchoff's laws, Thevenin, Norton, etc), it only mentions such important stuff only briefly.

 

[rdrr gnr]

All my suggestions have already been added. Nice. I'll talk to some of my professors and see if I can't get more for the Classical Studies/Language fields.

I know that OP takes a massive amount of effort to maintain and alter, but you may just want to put a "Language" category and have Linguistics and Communications (and all relevant suggestions) as sub-categories (e.g. semiotics, rhetoric, etc).

 

[Leona Lewis]

Anthropology: Malinowski's Argonauts of the Western Pacific.

Free text.

A foundational text of the discipline and of ethnography in general.

 

[Pepboy]

Economics: Seven Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economic Policy

But it's (legally) free here: http://moslereconomics.com/wp-content/powerpoints/7DIF.pdf

I read the first few "frauds", but my feelings on this matter are best summed by this Amazon review (not my review).

He's incredibly dismissive of inflation and I feel like the book is full of strawmen, for example:

“When our children
build 15 million cars per year 20 years from now, will they
have to send them back in time to 2008 to pay off their debt?
Are we still sending real goods and services back in time to
1945 to pay off the lingering debt from World War II?”
And today, as I run for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut,
nothing has changed. The ongoing theme of the other
candidates is that we are borrowing from the likes of China
to pay for today’s spending and leaving our children and
grandchildren to pay the bill.
Of course, we all know we don’t send real goods and
services back in time to pay off federal government deficits,
and that our children won’t have to do that either.

Anyways, it's free so you can read a chapter or two and decide for yourself, but I would not recommend.

I would recommend Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science by Wheelan for an introduction to economics. It does not cover macro-economics or financial economics much, but it's a great introduction to the micro principles.

 

[thomaser]

Great thread! I have tried to make a similar list, but didn't get very far.

A couple of suggestions, though:

Literature:

Harold Bloom: The Western Canon. Interesting looks at some of the best known western literary works through the ages by one of the best known literary critics. Also has a very comprehensive suggested reading-list in the back, which makes it useful for finding new works to read.

George Frazer: The Golden Bough. A VERY thorough analysis of how mythologies from all over the world share the same structures. There's a large edition with around 12000 pages, and an abridged edition clocking in at around 1300 pages. This could probably also be put into religion and anthropology.

 

[Vicetrailia]

What about marketing?

 

[el jacko]

For people considering philosophy, and wanting to read Nietzsche but without prior experience in the subject, I would recommend the following books, in order:

Nietzsche: a Philosophical Biography by Rudiger Safranski
The Portable Nietzsche Library (trans. Walter Kaufmann)

I would consider myself well-read in philosophical texts (minored in philosophy in undergrad) and this book was still unbelievably important to helping me understand what he is saying. For those reading in English, Kaufmann is the best translator, and addresses flaws in prior translations in the introduction to the book cited above.

For literature, I would recommend:

White Teeth by Zadie Smith (English literature)

 

[afternoon delight]

Writing

Why I Write by George Orwell - The Penguin Classics Edition contains four essays, "Why I write?," The Lion and the Unicorn," "A Hanging," and "Politics and the English Language." While two of them are introspective, the other two- particularly politics and the english language- talk about systems and literary thought at large. They are absolutely valid arguments and ideas, and anyone interested in the formation of creative language should read them. If you want some guiding thoughts and methods, it wouldn't hurt to answer some of the questions he posits. And it's only 9$

Physics

The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes - A paperback of 900+ pages, there is practically nothing missed in this author's dissection of atomic science, politics, humanity and invention, and the 'fallout' of the bomb. Extremely human balanced with hard, technical science explanations. Won the Pulitzer.

Strunk and White's The Elements of Style is essential in understanding the English language and how to properly use the it. Toss this bad boy under 'Writing.'

Fixed and seconded. One book I was thankful that college introduced to me.

 

[SeanR1221]

Psychology: Beyond Freedom and Dignity by Skinner. One of the best books on human behavior you'll read. You could also read his book About Behaviorism but it's a little heavy.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

Could come under compsci, philosophy or mathematics, but Godel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter is quite the read. Can't give a link because I'm posting from a shitty HTC phone.

 

[Flying_Phoenix]

Economics: Seven Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economic Policy

But it's (legally) free here: http://moslereconomics.com/wp-content/powerpoints/7DIF.pdf

This book is great so far.

 

[demon]

Could come under compsci, philosophy or mathematics, but Godel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter is quite the read. Can't give a link because I'm posting from a shitty HTC phone.

I have this and am going to read it some day. I keep putting it off for other books because it looks intimidating, but my dad said it's an extremely interesting read.

 

[Mumei]

To be honest, I don't know whether or not these are required reading, which makes me rather gun-shy about posting anything at all... though I do think that they are very educational and I'd recommend them if one were interested in the subject.

Gay History

• Gay American History, Jonathan Katz
• Homosexuality and Civilization, Louis Crompton
• Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia: The Regulation of Sexual and Gender Dissent, Dan Healey
• The Men with the Pink Triangle: The True Life-and-Death Story of Homosexuals in the Nazi Death Camps, Heinz Heger
• Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940, George Chauncey