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Ask HN: Which book can attract anyone towards your field of study?

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Re: Ask HN: Which book can attract anyone towards your field of study?

#151
post #91

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.

The book is described explicitly as "not for beginners". Do you have a recommendation for beginners?

I like Ken Forkish’s “Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza”

Re: Ask HN: Which book can attract anyone towards your field of study?

#153
post #4

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 randomly picked Code off a library shelf when I was a child, not sure the exact age but probably 13 or earlier, and it drew me into programming.

Re: Ask HN: Which book can attract anyone towards your field of study?

#154
post #31

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 would say Geoff Rayner-Canham's "Descriptive Inorganic Chemistry". It is obviously a university level teaching book, but I find it very appealing and not really hard to grasp. It made me fall in love with chemical processes and some material science concepts.

Re: Ask HN: Which book can attract anyone towards your field of study?

#156
"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.

Re: Ask HN: Which book can attract anyone towards your field of study?

#157

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 s…

This book is awesome. I wish they made something similar for other languages (actually French has a video series, French in Action, that is similar but not quite as effective as LLPSI).

Re: Ask HN: Which book can attract anyone towards your field of study?

#158
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.

Re: Ask HN: Which book can attract anyone towards your field of study?

#159

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 p…

Is Alan related to famed silversmith Paul?
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