Top Hacker News Book Recommendations in Engineering & Transportation (all time)

All Time Past 6 Months

Watchmaking

George Daniels

4.8 on Amazon

2 HN comments

Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution

Michael J. Behe

4.6 on Amazon

2 HN comments

The Discoverers: A History of Man's Search to Know His World and Himself

Daniel J. Boorstin

4.7 on Amazon

2 HN comments

Modern Welding

Andrew D. Althouse, Carl H. Turnquist, et al.

4.6 on Amazon

1 HN comments

The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another (Mit Press)

Ainissa Ramirez

4.6 on Amazon

1 HN comments

Understanding Wood: A Craftsman's Guide to Wood Technology

R. Bruce Hoadley

4.8 on Amazon

1 HN comments

Desk Ref

Thomas J Glover and Richard A Young

4.8 on Amazon

1 HN comments

Train: The Definitive Visual History

DK and Smithsonian Institution

4.9 on Amazon

1 HN comments

Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again

Eric Topol MD

4.5 on Amazon

1 HN comments

Teaming with Fungi: The Organic Grower's Guide to Mycorrhizae (Science for Gardeners)

Jeff Lowenfels

4.8 on Amazon

1 HN comments

Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence

Kate Crawford

4.2 on Amazon

1 HN comments

Defending Your Castle: Build Catapults, Crossbows, Moats, Bulletproof Shields, and More Defensive Devices to Fend Off the Invading Hordes

William Gurstelle

4.4 on Amazon

1 HN comments

Advanced Bread and Pastry

Michel Suas

4.7 on Amazon

1 HN comments

Designing Great Beers: The Ultimate Guide to Brewing Classic Beer Styles

Ray Daniels

4.7 on Amazon

1 HN comments

Holistic Management: A Commonsense Revolution to Restore Our Environment: Third Edition

Jody Butterfield, Allan Savory, et al.

4.8 on Amazon

1 HN comments

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jcrawfordoronJan 29, 2021

There's a bit of a cult classic book, "Pocket Ref" by Thomas Glover, and its big brother "Desk Ref." They're just books that attempt to provide reference tables for most of the things you'd need to look up throughout a wide variety of technical fields, but especially mechanical trades. A random selection of the contents includes "Densities of Gases," "Plywood & Panel Grading," "Canada & Mexico Postal Abbreviations & Capitals," "Solid Figure Formulas," "Commonly Available Pumps," "Welding Electrode Amperages," etc. Sort of a monument to what's possible in a reference work, and cheap insurance to throw in your toolkit or vehicle if you do any kind of field work for when there's no cell coverage.

I also have a book of mathematical tables, mostly for historic interest, but I think there's also some value in working from trig or log tables as I find looking at the table a few times helps you develop an intuition for estimating the function a lot faster than the attempts some textbooks make.

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