There’s a book for that, you know.
Metafilter has a fascinating post asking its readers to answer the following question:
What single book is the best introduction to your field (or specialization within your field) for laypeople?
There’s 125 comments and counting. Here’s a taste:
Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics (not just about comics!);
Edward Tufte’s The Visual Display of Quantitative Information; and
the aforementioned The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst.Reminisences Of a Stock Operator. This book is the bible for self directed independent trading and speculation. I read it my first week in the business and keep a copy on my desk to this day 20+ years later. If you are disciplined, patient and can follow the lessons in this book, you can be successful at trading.
the fire inside by steve delsohn is a really good read about firefighters and EMS. he interviews 200+ people from the field, anonymously, about the job and all aspects of it. some amazing stories, funny as hell and just as sad. gives a really good insight into the subculture of the field as well.
For Crime Scene Investigation and Processing: Practical Crime Scene Processing and Investigation
For physics, The Cartoon Guide To Physics is great. It’s cartoonish and fun, but accurate and not watered down. Feynman also gave a series of lectures at the college freshman level, available in print here, and they are absolutely wonderful, but large and expensive. See if a library has them.
The Investigative Reporter’s Handbook is more than just an introduction, but it’s pretty great, and has tools that anyone interested in gathering information about the world can use.
The best general introduction to linguistics I’ve encountered is David Crystal’s Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. It’s not organised as an encyclopedia, but as a series of one- or two-page summaries on major topics in linguistics. Highly readable, informative, and written with the intelligent layperson in mind.
This made me think of a couple of books I always recommend. I have an unabashed love Garner’s Modern American Usage, the definitive guide to speaking and writing in proper ’merican diction. In addition, I have the lawyer’s companion guide A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage, also by Bryan Garner. For a beautiful essay explaining the virtues of Garner’s MAU, check out Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage. In this article, David Foster Wallace, author of Infinite Jest, discusses the benefits and pitfalls of having language experts dictate a language’s ”proper” usage (versus just letting the language gradually define itself through democratic use and evolution). Wallace comes down firmly in favor of the language snobs. But his conclusions are still awfully fun to read.
The other book I always recommend is Ralph Denyer’s The Guitar Handbook. Surely there are lots of ways to learn the guitar. You could take lessons. You could practice hours a day learning the tablature for songs by System of a Down or Wishbone Ash. You could learn by osmosis via the punks at your middle school. Not me. I bought Ralph Denyer’s book and studied the chord shapes and scales inside. The same book showed me how the different chords could be used together to form the familiar patterns undergirding every popular song ever written. It even contains lessons on stringing and tuning your guitar and making adjustments to the bridge and neck. And it’s got profiles and quotes from tons of famous guitarists, including my all-time favorite Keith Richards quote:
“We’d do away with the differences between lead and rhythm guitar. You can’t go into a shop and ask for a ‘lead guitar.’ You’re a guitar player, and you play a guitar.”
I read that quote when I was 16 years old, and I’ll never forget it as long as I live. Anyone who’s ever seen me play guitar knows those words didn’t really help my guitar-ing. But I like to the think Keef was talking about how the way we perceive a thing can limit its use unnecessarily. Maybe that’s worth remembering whatever your field or specialization.
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