The Best Books
For years, long before the idea for this site, I’ve been mildly obsessed by the idea of the “Best Books”. For any given topic, I imagine, there must be a single Best Book to read. If you’re going to read a single book about something, which should it be?
I expect this question is easier to answer for some subjects than others. Maybe it’s also easier if the subject is narrow. For example, if you want a good overview of typography then The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst (Amazon US, UK) is usually suggested as the Best Book. But what if you want to learn about the history of the world in one book? There are such books but in a single volume they will probably be necessarily sketchy or else lean toward a particular period or region (for English-language books, probably Western civilisation).
Breaking a large topic into smaller chunks isn’t necessarily easy either. If you wanted to cover all of history in two books, is that easier? Maybe it’s even harder. What about three books? Six? Ten? How would you best break the subject up into smaller ones? Is it better to read one brilliant, but narrow, book over two or three broader ones?
Years ago I came across CanonicalTomes.org, a site which now only exists at archive.org. It enabled anyone to contribute names of books to a directory of subjects with the aim of finding the “definining works” for each one. It’s very patchy but there are some interesting books there and it suggests one way of gathering this kind of information.
In 2007 someone on Ask Metafilter asked What single book is the best introduction to your field (or specialization within your field) for laypeople?. Again, there’s some fascinating reading in there in a vast array of topics, from the broad to super specific. It also makes apparent the importance of the book-suggesting-person’s qualifications (in the loosest sense of the word) — some posters are obviously well read and suggest a single book after reading well around the topic. Others suggest a title with no backup information and, unless many others agree with them, I wouldn’t take their advice without further research; maybe this is the only book they’ve read on the subject and they’ve missed better ones.
An example of the well-read book-suggester is John Baez on his page How to Learn Math and Physics. I know nothing about him but his recommendations for books on these topics make it clear he knows what he’s talking about (as far as I can tell). No doubt others with similar levels of knowledge would suggest different titles but having to choose between suggestions from several well-read people is a good problem to have.
Often, without access to experts in a particular domain, finding out the Best Book on a topic is, like finding the answer to many difficult subjects online, a case of research, reading many points of view, and triangulating the right answer as best you can.
If you have ideas for how to find out the Best Books for many different domains, I’d love to hear them.
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