Bret Victor's bookshelf
On January 5, 2016 Bret Victor tweeted a picture of his bookshelf. I've catalogued all of the books, by topic, below. They cover a wide variety of subjects, and I think they're really interesting if you are a fan of Bret's work.
Comics
- Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud
- Reinventing Comics by Scott McCloud
- Making Comics by Scott McCloud
- Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative by Will Eisner (published by W. W. Norton & Company)
- Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative by Will Eisner (published by Poorhouse Press)
- Expressive Anatomy for Comics and Narrative by Will Eisner
- Comics and Sequential Art by Will Eisner
- DC Comics Guide to Coloring and Lettering Comics by Mark Chiarello and Todd Klein
- Faster Than a Speeding Bullet by Stephen Weiner
- How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way by Stan Lee and John Buscema
- The Visual Language of Comics by Neil Cohn
- Perspective! for Comic Book Artists by David Chelsea
- The Comics of Chris Ware by David M. Ball and Martha B. Kuhlman
- Chris Ware by Daniel Raeburn
- Krazy Kat by George Herriman and Patrick McDonnell and Peter Maresca
Animation
- The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation by Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas
- How to Make Animated Films by Tony White
- Grammar of the Film Language by Daniel Arijon
- 3D Art Essentials by Ami Chopine
- 3D Animation Essentials by Andy Beane
Game design
- Chris Crawford on Game Design by Chris Crawford
- Racing the Beam by Nick Montfort
- How to Do Things with Videogames by Ian Bogost
- Homo Ludens by Johan Huizinga
- Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster
Type
- The Non-Designer's Type Book by Robin Williams
- The Splendor of Islamic Calligraphy by Abdelkebir Khatibi and Mohammed Sijelmassi
- The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst
- Type by Simon Loxley
- Calligraphy by Arthur Baker
Interface design
- About Face by Alan Cooper and Robert Reimann
- The Art of Interactive Design by Chris Crawford
- Designing Interactions by Bill Moggridge
- The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design by Brenda Laurel
- The Humane Interface by Jef Raskin
Industrial design
- Human Engineering Guide for Equipment Designers by Wesley Woodson and Donald W. Conover
- Designing for People by Henry Dreyfuss
- Cradle to Cradle by Michael Braungart and William McDonough
- The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
- Small Things Considered by Henry Petroski
Visual design
- Understanding Color by Linda Holtzschue
- Interaction of Color by Josef Albers and Nicholas F. Weber
- The Nature and Art of Workmanship by David Pye
- Logic and Design by Krome Barratt
- A History of Graphic Design by Philip B. Meggs
- Universal Principles of Design by William Lidwell and Kritina Holden
- The Non-Designer's Design Book by Robin Williams
- The Nature and Aesthetics of Design by David Pye
Visual thinking
- Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards
- Visual Thinking by Rudolf Arnheim
- Art and Visual Perception by Rudolf Arnheim
- The Elements of Dynamic Symmetry by Jay Hambidge
- The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception by James J. Gibson
- Laws of Seeing by Wolfgang Metzger and Lothar Spillmann
- On the Rationalization of Sight by William Mills Ivins and Jean Pelerin
- The Back of the Napkin by Dan Roam
- Unflattening by Nick Sousanis
Information design
- The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward R. Tufte
- Envisioning Information by Edward R. Tufte
- Visual Explanations by Edward R. Tufte
- Beautiful Evidence by Edward R. Tufte
- Graphic Discovery by Howard Wainer
- Show Me the Numbers by Stephen Few
- Information Dashboard Design by Stephen Few
- Playfair's Commercial and Political Atlas and Statistical Breviary by William Playfair
- The Elements of Graphing Data by William S. Cleveland
- Visualizing Data by William S. Cleveland
- Semiology of Graphics by Jacques Bertin
- Visual Complexity by Manuel Lima
- The Book of Trees by Manuel Lima and Ben Shneiderman
- Information Graphics by Robert L. Harris
- Graph Design for the Eye and Mind by Stephen M. Kosslyn
- The Grammar of Graphics by Leland Wilkinson and D. Wills
- Cartographies of Time: A History of the Timeline by Daniel Rosenberg and Anthony Grafton
- On the Map by Simon Garfield
- Exploratory Data Analysis by John W. Tukey
- Cartographic Relief Presentation by Eduard Imhof
- The Collected Works of John W. Tukey. Volume I by John W. Tukey and William S. Cleveland
- The Collected Works of John W. Tukey. Volume IV by John W. Tukey and L.V. Jones
- The Collected Works of John W. Tukey. Volume V by John W. Tukey and William S. Cleveland
Architecture
- Introduction to Architecture by Francis D. K. Ching and James F. Eckler
- A Visual Dictionary of Architecture by Francis D. K. Ching
- How Buildings Learn by Stewart Brand
- How to Read Bridges by Edward Denison and Ian Stewart
- Notes on the Synthesis of Form by Christopher Alexander
- The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs and Jason Epstein
- A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander and Sara Ishikawa
- The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander
Writing
- The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson
- Language Myths by Laurie Bauer and Peter Trudgill
- Stein on Writing by Sol Stein
- Maps of the Imagination by Peter Turchi
- The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce
- The Art of Description by Mark Doty
- All The Fun's In How You Say A Thing by Timothy Steele
- The Careful Writer by Theodore M. Bernstein
- Roget's Thesaurus by Princeton Language Institute
- Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary by Merriam-Webster
Music theory
- Harmonic Experience by W. A. Mathieu
- On the Sensations of Tone by Hermann Helmholtz
- Temperament by Stuart Isacoff
- How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony by Ross W. Duffin
- Choreo-graphics by Ann Hutchinson Guest
- Traces Of Dance by Paul Virilio and Valerie Preston-Dunlop
Persuasion
- Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
- Getting More by Stuart Diamond
- Switch by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
- Why We Buy by Paco Underhill
- Influence by Robert B. Cialdini
Management
- The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen
- The Essential Drucker by Peter F. Drucker
- Peopleware by Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister
- The Design of Design by Frederick P. Brooks Jr.
- The Mythical Man-Month by Frederick P. Brooks Jr.
???
- Computer Lib by Theodor H. Nelson
- ???
- The Last Whole Earth Catalog by Stewart Brand
- Whole Earth Epilog by Stewart Brand
- The Next Whole Earth Catalog by Stewart Brand
- The Millennium Whole Earth Catalog by Howard Rheingold
- Whole Earth Software Catalog by Stewart Brand
- What to Do After You Hit Return by People's Computer Company
- My Computer Likes Me When I Speak in Basic by Robert Albrecht
Media
- Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan
- Narrative across Media by Marie-Laure Ryan
- The Bias of Communication by Harold Innis
- The Printing Press as an Agent of Change by Elizabeth L. Eisenstein
- Media and Symbols by D. R. Olson
The New Medium
- Hamlet on the Holodeck by Janet H. Murray
- Computers as Theatre by Brenda Laurel
- Computer Lib by Theodor H. Nelson
- Literary Machines by Theodor H. Nelson
- Mirror Worlds by David Gelernter
- ??? Data Management
- Human Interface: Where People and Computers Meet by Richard A. Bolt
- Libraries of the Future by J. C. R. Licklider
- Future Libraries by R. Howard Bloch and Carla Hesse
- Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard
- From Memex To Hypertext by James M. Nyce and Paul Kahn
- Artificial Reality 2 by Myron K. Krueger
- Software Takes Command by Lev Manovich
- Augmenting Human Intellect by D. C. Engelbart
Learning
- How Children Fail by John Holt
- How Children Learn by John Holt
- Learning All The Time by John Holt
- The End of Education by Neil Postman
- What's Math Got to Do with It? by Jo Boaler
- How to Survive in Your Native Land by Jack Herndon
- Mindstorms by Seymour A. Papert
- The Children's Machine by Seymour Papert
- The Connected Family by Seymour Papert
- Changing Minds by Andrea diSessa
- Getting It Wrong from the Beginning by Kieran Egan
- The Educated Mind by Kieran Egan
- Thought and Language by Lev S. Vygotsky
- Mind in Society by Lev S. Vygotsky
- Toward a Theory of Instruction by Jerome Bruner
- On Knowing by Jerome Bruner
- Actual Minds, Possible Worlds by Jerome Bruner
- Life in Classrooms by Philip W. Jackson
- What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy by James Paul Gee
- Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto
- A Different Kind of Teacher by John Taylor Gatto
- Weapons of Mass Instruction by John Taylor Gatto
- The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto
Embodied thinking
- Where Mathematics Come From by George Lakoff and Rafael Nuñez
- Cognition in the Wild by Edwin Hutchins
- The Hand by Frank R. Wilson
- The Hand Owner's Manual by Roy A. Meals
- I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas R. Hofstadter
- Evocative Objects by Sherry Turkle
- The Inner Game of Tennis by W. Timothy Gallwey
- Impro by Keith Johnstone
- Descartes' Error by Anthony Damasio
- Being There by Andy Clark
- Where the Action Is by Paul Dourish
- Simulation and Its Discontents by Sherry Turkle
- Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew B. Crawford
The mind
- Frames of Mind by Howard Gardner
- Origins of the Modern Mind by Merlin Donald
- Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter
- The Large, the Small and the Human Mind by Roger Penrose
- The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes
- Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
- The Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist
- The Quest for Consciousness by Koch Christof
- In Search of Memory by Eric R. Kandel
- The Society of Mind by Marvin Minsky
- On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins
- Mind Wide Open by Steven Johnson
- The Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore
Concepts and metaphysics
- Understanding Computers and Cognition by Terry Winograd and Fernando Flores
- Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies by Douglas R. Hofstadter
- Surfaces and Essences by Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander
- Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things by George Lakoff
- The Symbolic Species by Terrence W. Deacon
- Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
- The Way We Think by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner
- Origins of Human Communication by Michael Tomasello
Creativity and ideas
- Common as Air by Lewis Hyde
- Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky
- The Gift by Lewis Hyde
- Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson
- The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron
- Good Work by Howard E. Gardner and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
- The Act of Creation by Arthur Koestler
Scientific creativity
- How to Solve It by G. Polya
- Induction and Analogy in Mathematics by G. Polya
- Patterns of Plausible Inference by G. Polya
- Mathematical Discovery by G. Polya
- And Suddenly the Inventor Appeared by Genrich Altshuller
- Art of Doing Science and Engineering by Richard W. Hamming
- Creating Scientific Concepts by Nancy J Nersessian
- The Engelbart Hypothesis by Valerie Landau, Eileen Clegg, and Douglas Engelbart
- What Engineers Know and How They Know It by Walter G. Vincenti
Philosophy of Science
- Falling for Science by Sherry Turkle
- The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn
- The Road since Structure by Thomas S. Kuhn
- What Is This Thing Called Science? by Alan F. Chalmers
- Scientific Discovery by Patrick W. Langley and Herbert A. Simon
- Against Method by Paul Feyerabend
- The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination by Jacob Bronowski
- Reliable Knowledge by John M. Ziman
- The Sciences of the Artificial by Herbert U. Simon
- Science in Action by Bruno Latour
- Laboratory Life by Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar
Technology and culture
- What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly
- Out of Control by Kevin Kelly
- The Nature of Technology by W. Brian Arthur
- Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
- Technopoly by Neil Postman
- Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins
- Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky
- Small Pieces Loosely Joined by David Weinberger
- Remix by Lawrence Lessig
- Code by Lawrence Lessig
- The Future of Ideas by Lawrence Lessig
- Computers and Society by Richard W. Hamming
- The Coming of the Body by Herve Juvin
- Condition of Man by Mumford Lewis
- The Identity of Man by Jacob Bronowski
- Interface Culture by Steven A. Johnson
- Computer Power and Human Reason by Joseph Weizenbaum
- The Computer Age by Joel Moses Michael L. Dertouzos
- Science and Human Values by Jacob Bronowski
- ???
- From Satori to Silicon Valley by Theodore Roszak
- The Cult of Information by Theodore Roszak
- The Clock Of The Long Now by Stewart Brand
- Engines of Creation by Eric Drexler
- Free Software Free Society by Richard Stallman
- Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom
- Science Is Not Enough by Vannevar Bush
- I Seem to Be a Verb by R. Buckminster Fuller
- Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth by R. Buckminster Fuller
- Utopia or Oblivion by R. Buckminster Fuller
- Synergetics by R. Buckminster Fuller
Ecology
- EcoCities by Richard Register
- The Ecology of Commerce by Paul Hawken
- The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
- Sustainable Energy by David JC MacKay
- Don't Even Think About It by George Marshall
- Our Choice by Al Gore
Culture
- No Logo by Naomi Klein
- Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich
- Tools for Conviviality by Ivan Illich
- The Omega Seed by Paolo Soleri
- Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins
- Born to Buy by Juliet B. Schor
- The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris
- The Savage Mind by Claude Lévi-Strauss
- The Disappearance of Childhood by Neil Postman
- The Meaning of Human Existence by Edward O. Wilson
- Seeing like a State by James C. Scott
- Reassembling the Social by Bruno Latour
- The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell
Cultural history
- A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
- Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared M. Diamond
- Collapse by Jared Diamond
- Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen
- Thinking in Time by Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May
- Centuries of Change by Ian Mortimer
History of math
- Mathematics and Its History by John Stillwell
- Ways of Thought of Great Mathematicians by H. Meschkowski
- A Concise History of Mathematics by Dirk J. Struik
- Journey through Genius by William Dunham
- A History of Chinese Mathematics by Jean-Claude Martzloff
- King of Infinite Space by Siobhan Roberts
- Chaos by James Gleick
- The Lady Tasting Tea by David Salsburg
- Henri Poincaré by Jeremy Gray
- Henri Poincaré by Ferdinand Verhulst
- Emergence of the Theory of Lie Groups by Thomas Hawkins
- The Equation That Couldn't Be Solved by Mario Livio
- Science Awakening by B. L. Van Der Waerden
- Mathematics by Morris Kline
History of numbers and notation
- The Universal History of Numbers by Georges Ifrah
- Zero by Charles Seife
- An Imaginary Tale by Paul J. Nahin
- Gamma by Julian Havil
- Number Words and Number Symbols by Karl Menninger
- Enlightening Symbols by Joseph Mazur
- Numbers by Heinz-Dieter Ebbinghaus et al.
- Before Writing, Volume I by Denise Schmandt-Besserat
- Before Writing, Volume II by Denise Schmandt-Besserat
- The History of Counting by Denise Schmandt-Bessert
1st Person Historical Math
- Euclid's Elements by Euclid
- The Geometry by René Descartes
- An Introduction to Mathematics by Alfred North Whitehead
- Symbolic Logic by Lewis Carroll
- Mathematical Logic by Stephen Cole Kleene
- An Investigation of the Laws of Thought by George Boole
- A Mathematician's Apology by G. H. Hardy
- The World of Mathematics Volume 1 by James R. Newman
- The World of Mathematics Volume 2 by James R. Newman
- The World of Mathematics Volume 3 by James R. Newman
- The World of Mathematics Volume 4 by James R. Newman
Math (Misc)
- Mathematics by A. D. Aleksandrov and A. N. Kolmogorov
- Elementary Mathematics from an Advanced Standpoint: Geometry by Felix Klein
- Elementary Mathematics from an Advanced Standpoint: Arithmetic, Algebra, Analytics by Felix Klein
- Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos by Steven H. Strogatz
- Visual Complex Analysis by Tristan Needham
- Visual Complex Functions by Elias Wegert
- On Numbers and Games by John H. Conway
- Winning Ways for Your Mathematical Plays by Elwyn R. Berlekamp and John H. Conway
- Surreal Numbers by Donald E. Knuth
- Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott
- DIV, Grad, Curl, and All That by Harry M. Schey
- Measurement by Paul Lockhart
- Pearls of Discrete Mathematics by Martin Erickson
- Indiscrete Thoughts by Gian-Carlo Rota
- Discrete Thoughts by Mark Kac, Gian-Carlo Rota, Jacob T. Schwartz
- ???
Geometric Algebra
- Geometric Algebra for Computer Science by Leo Dorst and Daniel Fontijne
- Geometric Algebra for Physicists by Chris Doran and Anthony Lasenby
- Linear and Geometric Algebra by Alan Macdonald
- Vector and Geometric Calculus by Alan Macdonald
- Clifford Algebra to Geometric Calculus by David Hestenes and Garret Sobczyk
Groups & Symmetry
- Visual Group Theory by Nathan Carter
- The Symmetries of Things by John H. Conway and Heidi Burgiel
- Groups and Their Graphs by Israel Grossman and Wilhelm Magnus
- Regular Polytopes by H. S. M. Coxeter
- Symmetry by Hermann Weyl
- Symmetry by Roy McWeeny
Geometry
- The First Six Books of the Elements of Euclid by Oliver Byrne
- ???
- Turtle Geometry by Harold Abelson and Andrea diSessa
- The Geometry of Art and Life by Matila Ghyka
- The Fractal Geometry of Nature by Benoit B. Mandelbrot
- New Horizons in Geometry by Tom Apostol and Mamikon Mnatsakanian
- Regular Polytopes by H. S. M. Coxeter
Geometric Construction
- Graphic Statics by Seibert Fairman, Chester Sherman Cutshall
- Engineering Descriptive Geometry by Frank William Bartlett
- Practical Geometry and Engineering Graphics by W. Abbott
- History of Engineering Drawing by P.J. Booker
- The History and Development of Nomography by Dr. H. A. Evesham and Brenda Riddell
- The design of diagrams for engineering formulas and the theory of nomography by Laurence I. Hewes
Probability and Artificial Intelligence
- Theory of Probability by Harold Jeffreys
- Probability Theory by E. T. Jaynes
- Data Analysis by Devinderjit Sivia
- Probabilistic Graphical Models by Daphne Koller and Nir Friedman
- Perceptrons by Marvin Minsky and Seymour A. Papert
- Machine Learning by Tom M. Mitchell
- Heuristics by Judea Pearl
Systems & Modeling
- The Systems Bible by John Gall
- General Principles of Systems Design by Gerald M. Weinberg and Daniela Weinberg
- An Introduction to General Systems Thinking by Gerald M. Weinberg
- Theory of Modelling and Simulation by Bernard P. Zeigler
- Dynamics of Physical Systems by Robert H. Jr. Cannon
- Introduction to Engineering Design by T.T. Woodson
- The Nature of Mathematical Modeling by Neil Gershenfeld
- Alternate Realities by John L. Casti
- Living Control Systems III by William T. Powers
- Six Degrees by Duncan J. Watts
- Emergence by Steven Johnson
- Cybernetics by Norbert Wiener
- The Human Use Of Human Beings by Norbert Wiener
- Selected Papers of Norbert Wiener by Norbert Wiener
Signal Processing
- Signals and Systems by Alan V. Oppenheim and Alan S. Willsky
- Discrete-Time Signal Processing by Alan V. Oppenheim and Ronald W. Schafer
- Multirate Systems And Filter Banks by P. P. Vaidyanathan
Information theory
- Elements of Information Theory by Thomas M. Cover and Joy A. Thomas
- An Introduction to Analog and Digital Communications by Simon Haykin and Michael Moher
- Introduction to Data Compression by Khalid Sayood
- Information and Randomness by Cristian S. Calude
- Grammatical Man by Jeremy Campbell
Graphics
- 3D Computer Graphics by Alan Watt
- 3D Math Primer for Graphics and Game Development by Fletcher Dunn and Ian Parberry
- The Nature of Code by Daniel Shiffman
Numerical Analysis
- Introduction to Applied Numerical Analysis by Richard W. Hamming
- Numerical Methods for Scientists and Engineers by R. W. Hamming
- Convex Optimization by Stephen Boyd and Lieven Vandenberghe
Circuit Design
- Fields and Waves in Communication Electronics by Simon Ramo and John R. Whinnery
- Analog Integrated Circuit Design by David Johns and Kenneth Martin
- Analysis and Design of Analog Integrated Circuits by Paul R. Gray and Paul J. Hurst
- Analog Circuit Design by Bob Dobkin and John Hamburger
- Digital Integrated Circuits by Jan M Rabaey
- Logic Synthesis by Srinivas Devadas and Abhijit Ghosh
- Introduction to VLSI Systems by Carver Mead and Lynn Conway
- Analog VLSI and Neural Systems by Carver Mead
Architecture of Operating Systems
- Computer Architecture by John L. Hennessy and David A. Patterson
- The Architecture of Symbolic Computers by Peter M. Kogge
- The Design of the UNIX Operating System by Maurice J. Bach
- Modern Operating Systems by Andrew S. Tanenbaum
- Capability-based computer systems by Henry M Levy
- Hard Real-Time Computing Systems by Giorgio C. Buttazzo
History of Science
- The Discoverers by Daniel J. Boorstin
- Hidden Histories of Science by Robert B. Eds. Silvers
- The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science by E. A. Burtt
- The Man Who Saw Through Time by Loren C. Eiseley
- A History of Mechanical Inventions by Abbott Payson Usher
- The Clockwork Universe by Edward Dolnick
- Longitude by Dava Sobel
- John Von Neumann by Norman MacRae
- A Force of Nature by Richard Reeves
- Tesla by Margaret Cheney
- The Mystery of Metamorphosis by Frank Ryan
- A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
- Genius by James Gleick
- Francis Crick by Matt Ridley
- Warmth Disperses and Time Passes by Von Baeyer, Hans Christian
- Suspended In Language by Jim Ottaviani and Leland Purvis
- A Feeling for the Organism by Evelyn Fox Keller
- The Birth Of The Modern by Paul Johnson
- Great Physicists by William H. Cropper
- The Codex Leicester by Leonardo da Vinci
- ???
- Clocks And Culture by Carlo M. Cipolla
- Lunar Men by Jenny Uglow
- The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes
- The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage
- Wind Wizard by Siobhan Roberts
- Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field by Nancy Forbes and Basil Mahon
- Einstein by Walter Isaacson
- Bell Laboratories innovation in telecommunications, 1925-1977 by Roland Mueser
- The Maxwellians by Bruce J. Hunt
- Oliver Heaviside by Paul J. Nahin
- Renaissance Engineers from Brunelleschi to Leonardo da Vinci by Paolo Galluzzi
- Laser by Nick Taylor
- John Dalton and the Atom by F Greenaway
- The Copernican Revolution by Thomas S. Kuhn
First person historical science
- Discourse On Bodies In Water by Thomas Salusbury
- Operations of the Geometric and Military Compass by Galileo Galilei
- Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems by Galileo Galilei
- The Principia by Isaac Newton
- Faraday's Experimental Researches in Electricity by Michael Faraday
- Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall
- A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field by James Clerk Maxwell
- The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell, Vol. I by James Clerk Maxwell
- Modern Views of Electricity by Sir Oliver Lodge
- Treatise on Light by Christiaan Huygens
- The Collected Works of J. Willard Gibbs Vol. I by J. Willard Gibbs
- The Collected Works of J. Willard Gibbs Vol. II by J. Willard Gibbs
- Calculating Engines by Charles Babbage
- The Value of Science by Henri Poincare
- The Electron by Robert Andrews Millikan
- The Theory of Electrons by H. A. Lorentz
- The Chemical History of a Candle by Michael Faraday
- Physics and Beyond by Werner Heisenberg
- Relativity by Albert Einstein
- The Evolution of Physics by Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld
- Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard P. Feynman
- The Character of Physical Law by Richard Feynman
- Feynman Lectures On Computation by Richard P. Feynman
- My Inventions by Nikola Tesla
- The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
- The Double Helix by James D. Watson Ph.D.
- A Life Decoded by J. Craig Venter
- What is Life? by Erwin Schrodinger
- The Art of the Soluble by P.B. Medawar
- Collected Papers by Claude Elwood Shannon
- Electrons and Holes in Semiconductors by William Shockley
History of computers
- The Idea Factory by Jon Gertner
- History of Semiconductor Engineering by Bo Lojek
- Revolution in Miniature by Ernest Braun and Stuart MacDonald
- Engines of Logic by Martin Davis
- Microcosm by George Gilder
- Dealers of Lightning by Michael A. Hiltzik
- The Dream Machine by M. Mitchell Waldrop
- What the Dormouse Said by John Markoff
- Where Wizards Stay Up Late by Katie Hafner
- The Information by James Gleick
- Hackers by Steven Levy
- Revolution in The Valley by Andy Hertzfeld
- Insanely Great by Steven Levy
- Turing's Cathedral by George Dyson
- A Few Good Men From Univac by David E. Lundstrom
- The Man Who Invented the Computer by Jane Smiley
- Possiplex by Ted Nelson
- Geeks Bearing Gifts by Ted Nelson
- The Soul of A New Machine by Tracy Kidder
- Tools for Thought by Howard Rheingold
- Bootstrapping by Thierry Bardini
- History of Computing in the Twentieth Century by Nicholas Metropolis
- The UNIX Hater's Handbook by Simson L. Garfinkel and Daniel Weise
- Memory Machines by Belinda Barnet
- A History of Personal Workstations by Adele Goldberg
- History of Programming Languages by Richard L. Wexelblat
- History of Programming Languages, Volume 2 by Thomas J. Bergin and Richard G. Gibson
- The Closed World by Paul N. Edwards
- From Counterculture to Cyberculture by Fred Turner
- The Chip by T.R. Reid
Programming languages
- APL by Raymond Polivka and Sandra Pakin
- The Design and Evolution of C++ by Bjarne Stroustrup
- The Annotated C++ Reference Manual by Margaret A. Ellis and Bjarne Stroustrup
- The Joy of Clojure by Michael Fogus and Chris Houser
- Eiffel by Bertrand Meyer
- Programming Erlang by Joe Armstrong
- FORTH by W. P. Salman, O. Tisserand and B. Toulout
- Thinking Forth by Leo Brodie
- Introduction to Fortran by S.C. Plumb
- The Little Schemer by Daniel P. Friedman and Matthias Felleisen
- The Seasoned Schemer by Daniel P. Friedman and Matthias Felleisen
- The Reasoned Schemer by Daniel P. Friedman and William E. Byrd
- The Little MLer by Matthias Felleisen and Daniel P. Friedman
- Programming in Lua by Roberto Ierusalimschy
- Lucid, the Dataflow Programming Language by William W. Wadge
- Clause and Effect by William Clocksin
- Sketchpad by Ivan Edward Sutherland (thanks to Paul McJones for finding this)
- Smalltalk-80: The Interactive Programming Environment by Adele Goldberg
- Smalltalk-80: Bits of History, Words of Advice by Glen Krasner
- Smalltalk-80: The Language and its Implementation by Adele Goldberg and David Robson
- The TeXbook by Donald E. Knuth
- TeX: The Program by Donald E. Knuth
- Metafont: The Program by Donald E. Knuth
- Viewpoint: Toward a computer for Visual Thinkers by Scott Kim
- Visual Grammars for Visual Languages by Fred Lakin
Programming
- How to Design Programs by Matthias Felleisen and Robert Bruce Findler
- Design Patterns by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, John Vlissides
- The Art of the Metaobject Protocol by Gregor Kiczales and Jim des Rivieres
- Elements of Programming by Alexander A. Stepanov and Paul McJones
- Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming by Peter Van Roy and Seif Haridi
- Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by Harold Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman
- Types and Programming Languages by Benjamin C. Pierce
- Essentials of Programming Languages by Daniel P. Friedman and Mitchell Wand
- Advanced Compiler Design and Implementation by Steven Muchnick
- Introduction to Algorithms by Thomas H. Cormen and Charles E. Leiserson
- Hacker's Delight by Henry S. Warren
- Programming Pearls by Jon Bentley
- Coders at Work by Peter Seibel
- Computation by Marvin Lee Minsky
- Purely Functional Data Structures by Chris Okasaki
- The Space and Motion of Communicating Agents by Robin Milner
- Superdistribution by Brad J. Cox
- A Small Matter of Programming by Bonnie A. Nardi
- Basic Category Theory for Computer Scientists by Benjamin C. Pierce
Physics
- The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. I by Richard P. Feynman
- The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. II by Richard P. Feynman
- The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. III by Richard P. Feynman
- Six Easy Pieces by Richard P. Feynman
- New Foundations for Classical Mechanics by David Hestenes
- Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics by Gerald Jay Sussman and Jack Wisdom
- A Guide to Feynman Diagrams in the Many-Body Problem by Richard D. Mattuck and Physics
- The Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen W. Hawking
- The Illustrated "A Brief History of Time" and "The Universe in a Nutshell" by Stephen W. Hawking
- Relativity Visualized by Lewis Carroll Epstein
- Collective Electrodynamics by Carver A. Mead
- The Quark and the Jaguar by Murray Gell-Mann
- The Science of Radio by Paul J. Nahin
- Dreams of a Final Theory by Steven Weinberg
- The Sun, The Genome, and The Internet by Freeman J. Dyson
- From Being to Becoming by Ilya Prigogine
Biology
- On Growth and Form by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson
- The Red Queen by Matt Ridley
- Genome by Matt Ridley
- The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
- Biopunk by Marcus Wohlsen
- Monkeyluv by Robert M. Sapolsky
- Biocosm by James N. Gardner
- Human Universals by Donald Brown
- The Stuff of Life by Mark Schultz and Zander Cannon
- The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins