Which book can attract anyone towards your field of study?

"Seeing Like a State" by James C. Scott

I started my career in international development, and the book above provides a dozen case studies on states using scientific management, stats, etc. to try and control their growth/populations/economies and failing miserably.

It is a beautiful book in that it illustrates how difficult it is to actually manage a country and economy well, especially if you are trying to completely change it (i.e., "develop" it, solve poverty, etc.). It humbled me as a 22 year old "professional" wanting to fix the world.

"The Death and Life of Great American Cities" by Jane Jacobs is a close second to this theme of economic, technocratic development.

EDIT: I notice 22 upvotes. WOW! If you are a fan of this book or curious to hear more, please comment. Happy to elaborate. If you want a third book, The Evolution of Civilizations[1] is another fun one here. It tries to apply scientific principles and hypothesis testing to historical analysis!

[1] https://10millionsteps.com/review-evolution-of-civilizations

Finally, a question on HN I am "qualified" to answer. During my university education I came across Structures[1] by J.E. Gordon who, unlike me, was an aeronautical engineer but his take on structures really made so much sense to me, as a student of engineering, in a way that the fustian delivery of the professors at college did not. Some books stay with you for life - this one did for me.

[1] Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down by J.E. Gordon. Goodreads link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/245344.Structures

PiHKAL by Alexander and Ann Shulgin is on its face a book about love and chemistry. Taken together it becomes more of a treatise on how psychopharmacology is a method of personal and sociological analysis. Drug use becomes a psychological tool to manifest the phenomena of the mind that are normally hidden, and novel synthesis becomes a tool to then access the areas of the mind unexplored throughout history. Aside of all this, the Shulgin's story is one of absolute dedication to science in the face of its many impediments: internal psychology, interpersonal relations, social stigma, technical innovation, and authoritarian censorship.

A very tough question. I feel that it might be quite hard to lure a curious person into Computer Science, who doesn't know anything about the field yet.

One of the books I liked (since I actually studied Linguistics in my Bachelor's) and what drew me towards CS was "Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software" by Charles Petzold.

I think Masters of Doom is a great book for getting people interested in either software development in general, or game development. Alternatively, some of the horror stories may actually turn them away. But every time I read it, I get excited about writing code again.

"Deep Learning for Coders" (aka Fastai) https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/deep-learning-for/97814...

This book will take you from knowing nothing other than high school algenbra to knowing both practical applications and theoretical foundations and best practices for AI. If you're interested in AI and machine learning, you need this book.

(I'm in my late 30s, but I always try to look for "time-tested" books first. Books that seem to hold their value after decades; see also: Lindy effect.)

Language and linguistics: "Metaphors We Live By" by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphors_We_Live_By

Systems thinking: "An Introduction to General Systems Thinking" by Gerald M. Weinberg (1975): https://geraldmweinberg.com/Site/General_Systems.html

I still often use Weinberg's Systems Triumvirate when feeling stuck on a problem:

1. Why do I see what I see?

2. Why do things stay the same?

3. Why do things change?

I think a lot of people are completely missing the point if they're recommending textbooks or prescription-like books - it's very likely you were already interested in these subjects beforehand and are really just upholding that book as a great solution.

What really gets people interested is the narrative behind these subjects. What interesting thing happened within that field of study? What are the current problems we can solve and where are we headed? And the less the technical mumbo-jumbo, the better.

Michio Kaku's books - "Physics of the Future", "The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind (", etc. are the sort that would really influence young, fresh minds to pursue physics. He details what happens, and what could be to a sufficient detail without overloading the user with the mathematical rigour associated with these math heavy subjects.

Thank you debanjan16 for constructing a well-formulated question that delivered lots of high-quality additions to my "to read" list!

Strangely enough nothing is coming to mind for my field, technical writing. Docs for Developers is great at covering the end-to-end basics of a high-quality documentation process. But I feel like there is some book out there that has inspired me to think more deeply about how to effectively communicate ideas and instructions to other people, which is the true heart and soul of technical writing as an art and science. How We Learn by Benedict Carey is the right direction but I don't remember thinking of it as a masterpiece.

Ways of Curating by Hans Ulrich Obrist should do the trick for anyone considering contemporary art in galleries, museums, etc, and it’s also a great read for artists and collectors.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20613616-ways-of-curatin...

For me personally this helped a lot with the decision to create an international art center (small, and still under construction!) instead of just pounding my artist head against the wall of the market forever.

But generally speaking, it’s an eye opener and a great illustration of how to generate influence from enthusiasm. It’s probably hard to read if you aren’t already familiar with European contemporary art, but it rewards patience.

I would go with "Proofs and Refutations: The Logic of Mathematical" by Lakatos, its a dialog-form history of defining Euler's formula and it shows the human side of mathematics as a science. I think its great as math has this unique status as providing with undoubtable knowledge but history shows that human error is possible even in this field.

Alternately "The Unreality of Time" by McTaggart, it has less than 20 pages and argues that time doesn't exist since it is logically incoherent.

Not sure if this would get someone hooked up but for me those two were extremely fun reads.

EDIT: Just to be clear – both are meant as philosophy books, even if they touch on other things. :)

What a great question!

The book that got me into neuroscience was Phantoms in the Brain by V. S Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee. A 22-year old book that wowed 20-year-old me. Principles of Neural Design by Peter Sterling and Simon Laughlin is a more recent book. It is brilliant, beautifully written and probably should be required reading for anyone looking to do graduate studies in neuroscience. In a field inundated with data and siloes and jargon, it bats for a focus on jargon-free understanding of principles that can explain much of the complexity. It was hugely inspirational for us when doing our own book (plug alert!).

I hope that Journey of the Mind: How Thinking Emerged from Chaos, a book I co-authored, a book which drew inspiration from these two books, is able to do the same for many looking to study neuroscience and AI now.

Phantoms in the Brain https://www.amazon.com/Phantoms-Brain-Probing-Mysteries-Huma...

Principles of Neural Design https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Neural-Design-MIT-Press/dp...

Journey of the Mind https://www.amazon.com/Journey-Mind-Thinking-Emerged-Chaos/d...

Code by Charles Petzold then doing Nand to Tetris has given me an abiding (though amateur) fascination with computer architecture, which lead to building a 6502 machine and reading about lots of other architectures.

My "field of study" is more like a hobby, but the definitive book is "Racing the Beam" by Ian Bogost and Nick Montfort. If you're at all interested in retro game consoles and especially the clever tricks old programmers used to push these systems to their limits, it's an incredibly fun dive.

Rebel Without a Crew by Robert Rodriguez. I'm a filmmaker and that book glorifies guerrilla filmmaking like no other. Really fun book by the guy who unfortunately didn't go on to make very many critical successes but did create the masterpiece of cinema that is Sharkboy and Lavagirl

I am not a cryptographer but I do work in security and The Code Book by Simon Singh is an excellent history of the history of cryptography/cryptanalysis presented as periods through history where the pendulum swung between giving the edge to the code makers or breakers. The code makers have been ahead since about the 1970s.

Accounting...

The rule of accouting is that if anything excites you about accounting you shouldn't do accounting. The most fun I had studying accounting was learning about tax evasion, money laundering, defrauding stakeholders etc. Any academic book about forensic accounting could be deemed interesting if you just read only the case studies.

Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata

It teaches Latin in a very cool way, where the entire book is written in Latin but it starts off with simple sentences anyone with a Romance language background can understand, before diving into deeper sentences, all while being illustrated so one can still follow the plot if they're stuck.

It contrasts with very dense Latin books that focus on grammar and spelling, which often bore students. LLPSI instead takes readers on an entertaining journey.

The Algorithm Design Manual by Skeina got me hooked on algorithm design, after the CLRS book discouraged me. Skeina does a fantastic job of conveying the intuition behind how each algorithm works, so it's not a cookbook or nitpicky textbook. He also has these wonderful war stories of problems he solved, and example problems like "which telephone exchanges do you need to bomb in order to take the grid down?"

Measurement/A mathematicians lament by Paul Lockhart. The first is not by any means very advanced/interesting mathematics per se, but it is written by somebody with an incredible passion for mathematics, which you can feel throughout the whole book, and which was totally novel for me coming from schoolish mathematics drudgery. Also, the way he approaches mathematics and teaching is quite interesting. Nothing for somebody who is already into mathematics, but as an entry point it is absolutely great. The second is a critique of school math, freely available online (https://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/devlin/Lockharts...), that absolutely hits home on a lot of problems of math and school in general, but in a way that basically says "Look, its so cool, why are we ruining it? Lets do this better." which is much better than another bitter, destructive critique. And its well written and only twenty pages. Definitely recommend.

[Accounting && Finance/Investing]

Not my current job, but understanding the basics of accounting was related to technical jobs I previously held (in ERP) and finance/investing is useful in general.

I'd highly recommend "The Accounting Game" for anyone that quickly wants to understand accounting basics (U.S. accounting) and how everything fits together. It basically walks you through being a child with a lemonade stand and doing the accounting for it. Similarly if you want a quick overview of some of the multiples and what they mean for finance/investing, I'd recommend "Visual Finance".

The most fascinating book that I've read in the accounting/finance domain is "Financial Shenanigans" which outline different ways to manipulate financial statements. It would be my recommended goto book for the field of financial fraud.

For personal investing, my goto is "Quantitative Value" which methodically walks through different value investment strategies and backtesting them. I think the overall recommendation of buying companies that have low acquisition costs relative to their operational profits is good and it's how I screen stuff I buy, but the general mindset and systematic approach is what makes this book very valuable. This is not a book that will "attract anyone" but I'm pretty sure it's the one investment book I'd recommend to an analytical/scientific kind of person which I'd say is what the HN crowd is for the most part.

Not really my field of study, just on a hobbyist level I got into nonlinear dynamics.

All started with Steven Strogatz' book sync. https://www.stevenstrogatz.com/books/sync-the-emerging-scien...

I then found the amazing intro course on Complexityexplorer:

https://www.complexityexplorer.org/courses/136-nonlinear-dyn...

by Liz Bradley.

Since then I am hooked :)

Don’t Make Me Think, by Steve Krug. I used it for years as a required text in pretty much every UX related class I taught. Entertaining, super digestable and very nutritious.

Girard's rhetoric never fails to keep me hooked. I treasure any number of works of Girard, whether his introductions to Type Theory and his Linear Logic or notes on his quest for Transcendental Logic. Clear prose of exposition, to the point and clearly motivated, intermingled with literary allusions in critique of philosophers' ideas of truth, the work of Girard is truly a gem.

Particularly entertaining is his 'A pure waste of paper' (Appendix A of 'LOCUS SOLUM') (https://girard.perso.math.cnrs.fr/0.pdf). I could flip to a random page of his 'appendix' and just sink in.

A fine introductory work of his to the subject would be 'PROOFS AND TYPES' (https://people.mpi-sws.org/~dreyer/ats/papers/girard.pdf).

The entire ray tracing in one weekend[1] series is really good book for getting into computer graphics. It covers a simple implementation of path tracer and getting the image is really satisfying! Modern hardware and light simulation makes art fun!

[1]: https://raytracing.github.io/

Materials Science: Stuff Matters, Mark Miodownik

https://archive.org/details/StuffMatters

Very accessible and fun to read, and the book is structured around introducing a lot of fundamental materials science concepts in the context of everyday objects (silverware, chocolate, etc)

I am surprised that Algorithms to Live By has not been mentioned. (Disclaimer: I am still reading it.) That book is both accessible and practical for any layman. However, just enough hints at variations of the discussed algorithms are given that even a non-technical reader might be motivated to dive further into theoretical CS and read a paper or two.

The Phoenix Project is a fiction novel about an IT department for a large car company that experiences management dysfunction and battles frequent technical debt, but ultimately overcomes it by adopting the best practices of DevOps.

I first read its non-fiction companion book, the DevOps Handbook, which got me drinking the Kool-Aid, but this is also a wonderful, breezy read (no small feat for such a technical topic) that is an even more gentle introduction.

Not only did these two books make me come to appreciate DevOps, they also taught me about Kaizen and Toyota Production Model, which DevOps began as a software translation of. Subsequently, I have also applied these principles to the field of screenwriting.

"Stop Stealing Sheep and Find Out How Typography Works" - Spent at least a decade now doing design work to some degree (graphic design manager now) and while I read this one recently it's hands down the most easily accessible, no bullshit, funny design book with meaty tips and thoughts. Heartily recommend to basically anyone.

(1) Real Mathematical Analysis, by Charles Pugh is a wonderful introduction to pure mathematics for a mathematically inclined engineer. The back cover starts like this

> Was plane geometry your favourite math course in high school? Did you like proving theorems? Are you sick of memorising integrals?

(2) The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, by Oliver Sacks. I think it's impossible to read this (or a number of other works of Sacks') and not be mesmerized by the workings of the human brain. Disclaimer: I wouldn't call neuroscience my "field of study" even though I did study it.

Eloquent JS, for coding, On Photography by Sontag for Photography, Anything James Baldwin for literature, Anything Angela Davis or Emma Goldman for political theory, A blank (perhaps square lined, Rhodia brand) notebook and a pack of Stabillo pens for creativity.

Anyone interested in product management shoulder read "INSPIRED: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love" by Marty Cagan.

"Fermat's Enigma" for Mathematics

"The Pleasure of Findings Things Out" for science

"How To Draw: Drawing And Sketching Objects And Environments From Your Imagination" for concept art / industrial design

As a volcanologist, I feel everyone should read "No Apparent Danger" . It's quite a critical account of the profession, so it might not "lure" you, but it's what you need to read if you are interested. Accessible and full of true drama and tragedies you probably didn't know about.

Original poster: Did you mean "tome" when you said "epitome"?

"Fooled by Randomness" by N N Taleb for a real life overview of markets and decision making under uncertainty.

And to a lesser extent "The Black Swan"

He's not the most straightforward authors to read on these topics but his self awareness is refreshing compared to some of the charlatans in the industry (I'm thinking of a large tech oriented ETF here...)

It is off-topic, insofar as it's not my field, but let me answer a dual question:

The Vital Question by Nick Lane made me think that were I to start over, be young and finish school, I'd study biology and biochemistry.

Kicking away the ladder by Ha-Joon Chang

Industrial development and political economy, it really is a must read for anyone even mildly interested on the field, then you could go to Joan Robinson's criticism of Ricardian economics, but these are slightly more in depth topics

The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation by Jon Gertner.

Gives a great and accessible overview of the incredible work that happened at Bell Labs from it's inception till it demise. Bell Labs is what happens when you bring the greatest minds of your time under one roof and give them creative freedom. It's was fascinating to read how much engineering discipline progressed due to direct result of the inventions made there and how they influence pretty much every aspect of our modern lives.

Tracy Kidder's Soul of a New Machine for computer engineering.

For logic: Language, Truth and Logic by AJ Ayer. It is an account that tried to introduce logical positivism to the English speaking world after the author visited Vienna in the 1930s. While logical positivism didn’t pan out, the book is full of the excitement of resolving multiple perennial philosophical problems all at once. The author’s enthusiasm is infectious.

Chaos by James gleick for multiple fields in physics

"The Molecular Biology of the Cell", an actual textbook. It's like the owners' manual for your cells.

After spending more than a decade and a half in the field of software development/computer science I’ve come to realise some fields simply are not attractive to many/most people of other fields. Not at all.

Hell, CS is not attractive to a lot of people working in the field. They work because it pays the bills.

So no, at the risk of sounding like I’m full of myself, I’d say there’s simply ZERO such books at least for computer science.

It’s a very specific field that many people get zero exposure to from school till the end. Unlike fields like history, arts, even medicine/diseases etc.

Mathematics:

Burns, Marilyn (1975) I hate Mathematics Book, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. https://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Brown-Paper-School-Books/...

Mathematics, philosophy, music, molecular biology/biochemistry, computer science, visual art, poetry, cognitive science:

Hofstadter, Douglas R. (1979) Gödel, Escher, Bach - An Eternal Golden Braid. New York, NY: Basic Books. ("GEB")

Computer Science:

Abelson, Harold and Gerald Jay Sussmann (1984) Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ("SICP")

Stoll, Clifford (1989) The Cuckoo's Egg. New York, NY: Doubleday.

Linguistics:

McCrum, Robert, Robert MacNeil, William Cran (1986). The Story of English. New York, NY: Viking. https://archive.org/details/storyofenglish000mccr

Accounting: n/a

Physics & Mathematics - Anyone who seriously pursues these fields learns to embrace the challenges as beautiful and the struggle to unravel their nature as fulfilling. To do this, we embrace the beauty in nature and see the connection with everything around us. Four books come to mind.

Physics:

1. Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character) by Richard P. Feynman

2. The Universe in a Nutshell by Steven Hawking

Mathematics:

1. Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences by J.A. Paulos

2. Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by D. Hofstadter

These books brilliantly illuminate the beauty in these fields. They show you that underneath all of that complex notation and "math speak" are beautiful ideas about life, the universe, and the nature of reality. These fueled me, even in to my PhD research. I still love them today.

"How to lie with maps" by Mark Monmonier

https://www.amazon.com/How-Maps-Third-Mark-Monmonier/dp/0226...

Not my fields but.

The Armchair Economist by Steven Landsburg for economics.

The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman for design in any aspect.

Closer to my field of organisational performance/psychology.

The Fearless Organisation by Amy C Edmondson.

Atul Gawande - Better or Being Mortal

Non-technical but very interesting and emotive to most people.

Healthcare analytics

"The Art of Responsive Drawing" by Nathan Goldstein.

It's an in depth analysis of the elements of drawing and, more importantly, what those elements actually do. It really celebrates the expressive and creative aspects of drawing, in a way that's both beautiful to look at, and accessible to read.

Not exactly my field, but I think "Building a Storybrand" by Donald Miller is a great read for everyone dealing with creating products customers love.

"Statistical Rethinking" by Richard McElreath gets a lot of people excited about statistics again, after having suffered through the standard curriculum. So it's a lure, but with the caveat that it does expect that you do already know quite a bit of statistics.

For Industrial Engineering or Operations Research, I'd say The Goal by Goldratt. An easy to read novel that leaves you looking at things differently.

Introduction to the Theory of Computation, Michael Sipser

The Science of Discworld series.

It isn't a group of heady physics textbooks, but they do seem to unlock interest and understanding in the fields they address for a layperson. Probably precisely because they embrace that quite a lot of explanations only hold within particular models.

For my previous career as mathematical biologist: "The Ecological Detective" by Hilborn and Mangel, and "Introduction to Quantitative Genetics" by Falconer and Mackay. The first is a fascinating, exciting, and readable journey into biology, statistics, and thinking like a detective (data, models, theory, and how much weight one should assign to each component of the investigation), which is how people doing biological research should think. The second is a very readable introduction to Quantitative Genetics, which comprises the mathematical and statistical tools we should use when we talk about selection, drift, and heritability of traits.

The Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll.

Lifespan by David Sinclair would be my recommendation if you want to energise someone for molecular biology/ biotech

Working as an UX Engineer, I always recommend „refactoring UI“ by Adam Watham. It‘s super easy to read, most pictures speak for themselfes. This book targets developers who like to put their UI on the next level.

The code book, by Simon Singh.

History of cryptography, really fascinating.

Ones I would suggest as gateway drugs would be:

The Code Book, by Simon Singh is a very accessible history of cryptography and its role in historical events.

The Nazi Census, by Aly, Roth and Black, is an important survey of how data collection methods get used for bad things, and I recommend it to anyone doing large scale systems architecture, or working in privacy. (replace statisticians with 'epidemiologists', and you start to see a theme.)

The Mathematical Theory of Communication, by Claude Shannon is beautiful, and gives you an intuition for concepts like bandwith, signal, message entropy, finite fields, among others.

Power, by Jeffery Pfeffer, when combined with the Dictator's Handbook by Smith and DeMesquita forms the foundation for any serious management and strategy consulting.

GEB, by Hofstader was a way to have an intuitive frame of reference about cognitive science and theories of mind, which I think are going to be the next great cultural battle ground, and also relevant in the context of machine learning, and consulting.

My field? Security, privacy, and risk management.

What really got me into strength training was accidental read of

Overcoming Gravity: A Systematic Approach to Gymnastics and Bodyweight Strength

This book turned out to be infinite knowledge source about physical training and how our body works in general. At first I wasn't convinced as the author looks more like a computer geek than ultra strong gymnast - but once you read it, you get to understand what strength really is, and why size of your muscles do not convey how strong you are.

The Case for Space by Robert Zubrin.

Puts recent developments by SpaceX in context, and shows how we really are about to settle the cosmos in an economically sustainable way. A call to action to anyone who wants to participate to start making space companies now.

Radical Abundance by K. Eric Drexler.

Re-introduces the concept of atomically precise manufacturing (aka molecular nanotechnology) and shows how it can solve basically all major global problems from climate change to energy crisis to wars over resources.

Some books from a few different domains which may be of the type OP is asking for:

1. The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric : Understanding the Nature and Function of Language by Sister Miriam Joseph.

2. Introduction to Logic by Irving Copi.

3. Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective by Randall Bryant and others.

5. Prolog Programming by Ivan Bratko.

6. Information Theory, Inference and Learning Algorithms by David MacKay

7. Geometry by Brennan.

8. Understanding Poetry by Robert Penn Warren and Cleanth Brookes

In my field it was only SICP.

And then maybe during the fractal wave The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants.

The art of electronics for electrical engineers. It is dated, but it has everything

“Our mathematical universe” by Max Tegmark.

I’m not a physicist, but this book took me very close to abandoning my CS career and getting into theoretical physics.

For general linguistics: "The Unfolding of Language" by Guy Deutscher.

If you're looking into user experience/usability, then:

"Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug

"Design of Everyday Things" by Donald Norman

Not entirely sure what you are asking here, but:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Threaded-Interpretive-Languages-R-G...

It's quite easy to get into and you can expand it and have all sorts of fun with it. Certainly not a revered epitome.

Alice in Numberland by Baylis and Haggarty was one of the books that made me want to become a mathematician when I found it in the school library and read it as a teenager. There was also a little set of booklets called Derek Holton's Problem Solving Series that drew me in but I'm sure they must be impossible to get hold of now.

Not my field of study but the book but I got really engaged with this book on architecture (houses) patterns https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003TXSR1O/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...

https://cs3110.github.io/textbook/cover.html

This just emerged right in front of our eyes. Highest quality. Way better than Real World Ocaml.

Graham Hutton's Programming in Haskell 2ed (plus his video courses).

Programming in Scala Fourth Edition.

Uncle Tungsten by Oliver Sacks. I'm a chemist trying to turn physicist and the childish enthusiasm of little Oliver (he's around 11--13 in the book) for “the lovingly detailed, naturalistic, descriptive chemistry of the nineteenth century” makes me feel less remorseful about my choice.

Discipline and Punish (Michel Foucault)

Not my field of study or existence, but what happened in a bare hundred years to make public execution private, and prisons into factories into schools?

It's a great book, you should read it.

The Republic (Plato)

How do you get someone to listen to you? (first answer: threaten them with violence). "Footnotes to" etc.

It's not my field, but feels like an appropriate answer.

After the recent death of the myrmecologist EO Wilson, I decided to order a couple of his books and have spent the last few nights reading "Journey to the ants". It has been completely fascinating, I can't put it down.

Chemistry: I have only started it, but knowing the author and from the few pages I could yet read I have good reasons to believe that the following will fit:

Lowe, Derek B. (2016). The Chemistry Book: From Gunpowder to Graphene, 250 Milestones in the History of Chemistry.

For cultural anthropology, I'd say it's 'In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio' by Philippe Bourgois. It's a fascinating read based on the authors ethnographic study of life on the margins in NYC in (I think?) the 90's.

"Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" by Robert B. Cialdini (1984) "How to Make Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie (1936)

Two great books that could lure a curious mind into sales. However, I recommend both to everyone.

I think there ought to be a book that explains how the modern world works at large, that'd include many many fields of study and explain how they all work together.

I'm not aware of anything of the sort. If anyone else knows, let me know :)

Godel Escher Bach influenced me to major in Cognitive Science. I don't imagine that book as impactful today as it was then, because many of the ideas it discusses have become popular topics. But it may still be fun to read.

Geology: The Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson

Though he does such a good job of passionately portraying so many topics in these books I feel they could get people into any one of the earth sciences. Hell, even politics and economics.

I totally recommend this series for various domains:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manga_Guides

I'm currently writing (almost finished) a book that's designed to get people into a junior level IT position as a systems administrator (in an environment with public Cloud infrastructure): https://upload.academy is the platform it will be launched on (also my platform.)

I'm hoping to enable people to get into this amazing field of ours so that they can enjoy a better life with better options and long term economic prospects.

For Medieval Studies I recommend the novels of Umberto Eco.

Especially Baudilino.

On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee, is perhaps one of the more interesting books on food science that is not a cook book. It's not something that you would read straight through, but great none the less.

Modernist Cuisine by Nathan Myhrvold is perhaps the most beautiful group of cook books, although quite pricey.

Professional Goldsmithing by Alan Revere is hands down one of the best books on jewelry fabrication in precious metals.

Great question actually, love the wording and framing of it.

For field archeology: The Making of the English Landscape by Hoskins.

A hobby rather than a field of study, but Open Crumb Mastery by Trevor Wilson made me fall in love with sourdough baking, it's amazing. I'm baking regularly for 2 years now since reading it and has gotten pretty good, even with difficult pastry like croissants and panettone.

I am not a physicist now but, The Feynman Lectures on Physics really lured me to love physics in high school

"Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug, and "Thinking With Type" by Ellen Lupton

the James Herriot series is a good, light-hearted (if not outdated) intro to the veterinary industry.

Mechanical (or aerospace) engineering.

Fun/easy reading: Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed (Ben R. Rich)

Textbook:

Shigley's Mechanical Design (recent editions are by Budynas/Nisbett by older editions with Shigley as an author are just as good as an intro)

Linguistics: some time ago, a member recommended

Mark Forsyth's Etymologicon

, which I promptly found and read: not only it is a must-read in general (if you speak, read or write), but surely it should lure one into an interest in studies concerning language.

Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse ISBN 0-02-905980-1

https://wtf.tw/ref/carse.pdf

"A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility"

Short Read, very dense, and fully free.

I don’t think a really good title exists, but the closest might be “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Control Room” by Gregory McMillan. It is basically a comic book written by an engineer in the industrial controls field.

About translation and language studies: "After Babel" by George Steiner.

The soul of a new machine

"The Name of the Wind" by Pat Rothfuss.

(I'm a fantasy fiction writer)

Software engineering

- Steve Wozniak’s autobiography

- The Phoenix Project

- The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson

“What is life?” By Schroedinger. Mostly because it is such a short book and describes the underlying questions very well.

Robert Whitaker's "Anatomy of an Epidemic" for mental health / clinical psychology / psychiatry.

How Hollywood Tells It, by David Bordwell.

any physics book for hs... but without penalty of failing tests etc. Why sky is blue, how does heat get to earth from sun, how do computers work, how does magnet work, how to tell how far ball will go if i throw it, why do balloons stick to wall when rubbed, etc....

In Pursuit of the Traveling Salesman: Mathematics at the Limits of Computation -- William J. Cook

I feel the question highlights how stupid it is to limit yourself to a single field of study.

The Feynman Lectures.

Someone post something about astronomy also please!

Stalking the Wild Asparagus - Eueull Gibbons.

the Selfish Gene. this book can attract people who want understand how creatures work

POC || GTFO

"Capital in the 21st Century" by Thomas Piketty.

No matter your opinion on his politics or the reference to Marx it's interesting and the data collected is vast.

CLRS

FOUNDATIONS OF MECHANICAL ACCURACY Wayne Moore