This is a plain-text version of Bret Victor’s reading list. It was requested by hf on Hacker News.
Highly recommended things!
This is my five-star list. These are my favorite things in all the world.
A few of these works have had an extraordinary effect on my life or way of thinking. They get a sixth star. ★
‘[These are] the bibles of information design. Nothing comparable exits.’
-
- The Visual Display of Quantitative Information – Edward R. Tufte
- Envisioning Information – Edward R. Tufte
- Beautiful Evidence – Edward R. Tufte
- *Meggs’ History of Graphic Design* – Phillip B. Meggs & Alston W. Purvis - History is the best distinguisher of fashion from fundamentals. - *The Elements of Graphing Data* – William S. Cleveland - How to present data, and the why of the how. - *Logic & Design* – Krome Barratt - A bizarre and fascinating tour de force of analytic design.
‘The pedagogical potential of the comic form is vast and mostly untapped.’
- ★ Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art – Scott McCloud
- Reinventing Comics: How Imagination and Technology Are Revolutionizing an Art Form – Scott McCloud
- Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga, and Graphic Novels – Scott McCloud
- The Design of Everyday Things – Donald Norman
- Design as cognitive science.
- Designing for People – Henry Dreyfuss
- Memoirs of one of the founders of industrial design.
- ★ Cradle to Cradle – Michael Braungart & William McDonough
- Manufacturing is compatible with global ecology.
- ★ The Inmates are Running the Asylum – Alan Cooper
- The book that got me here.
- About Face 2.0 – Alan Cooper
- The first comprehensive treaties on interface design.
- The Humane Interface – Jef Raskin
- Another classic analytic look at interface design.
- Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals – Katie Salen Tekinbas & Eric Zimmerman
- The game design textbook. A comprehensive and insightful analysis of interactive design.
- A Theory of Fun – Raph Koster
- Why learning is fun, and fun is learning.
- [Broken Link] – Chris Crawford
- One of the earliest and deepest thinkers on game design.
- Lost Garden – Dan Cook
- Essays on creative and analytical approaches to game design.
- Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs – Harold Abelson & Gerald Jay Sussman
- The essence of software engineering.
- The Little Schemer – Daniel P. Friedman, Matthias Felleisen, Duane Bibby, and Gerald J. Sussman
- How to think recursively. One of the most unique and effective peddagogic books ever written.
- Hacker’s Delight – Henry Warren, Jr.
- A treasure of bit-manipulation algorithms.
- The Design and Evolution of C++ – Bjarne Stroustrup
- Biography of a language.
- ★ Lambda the Ultimate
- Everything I know about programming language theory, I owe tot his site.
- CiteSeer
- Online library of research papers. Invaluable. Down with ACM extortion!
- E.W. Dijkstra Archive
- Collected writings of one of the founders of computer science.
Good to work with:
- Lua
- A simple, elegant scripting language. Extensible and embeddable.
- OpenLaszlo
- Declarative layout, rapid prototyping.
- Haskell
- The programming language for the 21st century.
Inspiring to read about:
- Inform
- io
- Erlang
- Fortress
- Clojure
- Reforming the Mathematical Language of Physics – David Hestenes
- The geometric structure of abstract nonsense.
- Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos – Steven Strogatz
- Pictures, examples, geometric intuition. Greatest textbook ever.
- Visual Complex Analysis – Tristan Needham
- Complex analysis explained geometrically. Beautiful.
- Gödel, Escher, Back – Douglas Hofstadter
- The formal systems, they are everywhere.
- ★★ The Art of Doing Science and Engineering – Richard Hamming
- How to do great work. How to think.
- And Suddenly the Inventor Appeared – Genrich Altshuller
- A delightfully insane introduction to systematic invention.
- Folklore – Andy Hertzfeld
- Anecdotes about the creation of the original Macintosh.
- ★★ Mindstorms – Seymour Papert
- This is how humans were meant to learn.
- Dumbing Us Down – John Taylor Gatto
- Why “schooling” is the opposite of “education.”
- How Children Fail – John Holt
- Why “schooling” is the opposite of “education.”
- How to Survive in your Native Land – James Herndon
- Why “schooling” is the opposite of “education.”
- Technopoly – Neil Postman
- Technological dependence, and the amorality of progress.
- The Structure of Scientific Revolutions – Thomas Kuhn
- This is how the world changes: with a bang, not a whimper.
- Guns, Germs, and Steel – Jared Diamond
- The birth of civilization and technology.
- Amusing Ourselves to Death – Neil Postman
- Form limits function.
- ★ The Corporation – Joel Balkan, et al.
- We’ve created a monster.
- Ralph Nader: An Unreasonable Man – Mantel & Skroven – Portrait of a modern-day saint.
- A People’s History of the United States – Howard Zinn
- The winners write the history books.
- Lies My Teacher Told Me – James Loewen
- The winners write the history books.
- The Careful Writer – Theodore Bernstein
- Language porn!
- The Mother Tongue – Bill Bryson
- History of English.
- RhymeZone
- Superb rhyming dictionary.
- thesaurus.com
- Roget’s New Millenium, baby. That’s how I roll.
- ytmnd
- Sheepfilms
- HappyToast
- Fireland
- Trigger Happy TV
- Look Around You
- Improv Everywhere
- Squelched
- Orisinal – Ferry Halim
- Knytt Stories – Nicklas Nygren
- Braid – Jonathan Blow
- Psychonauts – Tim Schafer
- World of Goo – Kyle Gabler & Ron Carmel
- Digital: A Love Story – Christine Love
- Beyond Good and Evil – Michael Ancel
- vvvvvv – Terry Cavanagh
- Harmonic Experience – W.A. Mathieu
- Tonal theory done right.
- The World’s Greatest Fakebook
- The first one I reach for.
- Alesis Micron
- Makes a great stocking stuffer!
- OverClocked Remix
- The Wingless – John Burnett
- 8-bit Collectivee
- Editor’s note: 8bc is now defunct. You might instead try chipmusic.org; perhaps start with the ‘chipmusic everyone needs to have’ thread.
- Big Giant Circles – Jimmy Hinson
- Stanford Harmonics
- Watchmen – Alan Moore
- Nausicaa – Hayao Miyazaki
- Fables – Bill Willingham
- Re-Gifters – Mike Carey
- Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal – Zach Weiner
- Truck Bearing Kibble – Kramer & Vaughn
- Simulated Comic Product – Kevin Forbes
- Perry Bible Fellowship – Nick Gurewtich
- Married to the Sea – Drew and Natalie
- xkcd – Randall Munroe
- Octopus Pie – Meredith Gran
- Cat and Girl – Dorothy Gambrell
- Wigu – Jeffery Rowland
- Narbonic – Shaenon Garrity
- Spamusement – Steven Frank
- Subnormality – Winston Rowntree
- Chaim Gingold
- Aza Raskin
- Oliver Steele
- Chris Hecker
- Kyle Gabler
- Adam Cadre
- Charles Bloom
- Eskil Steenberg
- Brad Templeton
- Clay Shirky
- Stewert Brand
A few years ago I put together a list from a photo of Bret's bookshelf