Great, thanks! I’m buying it right now.
Technical writer, here. I’ve got three:
On Writing, by Stephen King.
On Writing Well, by William Zinsser.
The Elements of Style, by Strunck and White.
The first two show what it means to really care about writing, about the words and the craft. The third is a simple classic on how to write clearly. Writers shouldn’t be without any of them.
The Armchair Economist by Landsburg
VERY interesting thread. My Amazon wishlist has just been re-loaded.
On Statistics: The classic layman’s guide to statistical misuse is Darrell Huff’s How to Lie With Statistics. It’s one of those books that should be required reading in high school. For stats in general, Larry Gonick’s The Cartoon Guide to Statistics is what I recommend to mathphobis who have to take a stats course. It covers a lot of ground and makes it incredibly understandable.
On Database Design: Wertz’s Relational Databases is so damned readable for beginning database managers that I actually read it on a beach in Hawaii. How geek is that?
Well, Snickers made good recommendations with two of those books (On Writing and Elements of Style). I’ll have to rush out and buy the third one, as I haven’t read it. Of course, those books don’t really (as the OP phrased it) communicate the coolness that is our field of writing. They’re just how-to books (albeit good ones). I’m going to have to ponder a while before giving an answer for writers.
My primary (non-writing) field of expertise is such a specialized field that there’s only one really definitive book, and modesty prevents me from telling you who wrote it.
As for my hobbies…
-
If there’s a really wonderful book about CSS (cascading style sheets) that’s good for beginners, I’ve yet to find it.
-
Steven Levy’s Hackers is a great introduction to what the word “hacker” used to mean. A great guide to geekdom.
-
The best introduction to the cool and wonderful world of homebrewing is unquestionably The Complete Joy of Homebrewing by Charlie Papazian.
-
And for Windows users just discovering the wonderful world of the Macintosh, run (don’t walk) to your nearest bookstore and buy David Pogue’s Switching to the Mac.
You took mine. It’s really a great book to have around for anyone, not just theatre techs. It has conversion tables for just about everything, and all sorts of weights of things from an average sheet of 1/2 inch ply to (I think) the mass of the earth. The ‘Shop Math’ section is especially useful for folks like me that aren’t too good with remembering things.
I also like Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace.
And if you want to get into the more information-design side of tech writing, there’s Dynamics in Document Design and the classic How to Write Usable User Documentation.
[hijack]I love Reviving Ophelia! A little bit outside your field, but have you read The Body Project: And Intimate History of American Girls? If you have, what did you think? (Be gentle, please, I’m a lowly English major.)[/hijack]
For my normal hobby: Probably Stitch ‘n’ Bitch. I know, I know. It’s everywhere, but it’s perfect for a beginning knitter who doesn’t want to look like an un-hip grandma. It has a nice history of knitting in the introduction that’s isn’t stuffy. And much less expensive than the Vogue knitting bible.
For my weird hobby: This one’s really difficult. I can’t think of any books that offer a good general introduction to historical costumes/running around eating deep-fried turkey legs. Maybe something by Jean Hunnisett or Rosemary Ingham, who are theatrical costume designers. I’d love to suggest something by Janet Arnold, but I think that would make someone’s head asplode if it was the first thing they saw. Definitely not the Winter and Savoy book, though. Why start with bad habits?
For major/hoped for career: I’m an English lit major, and I’d like to be a college English professor some day. I recommend How To Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas Foster to anyone who doesn’t “get” literature. For what I think I’d like to write my master’s thesis on, though that’s far in the future, From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers. Maybe The Uses of Enchantment would be a better choice. Anyway, I’d like to write about the use of fairy tale and myth in 19th century women’s lit.
My current “job”: I work on the family dairy farm during the summer and whenever I’m home during the school year. It pre-dates me by about seventy years, but The Land Remembers has the same sense of family and the farm and the land and blah blah blah.
I hope we weren’t supposed to pick just one field. Eep.
For a couple of interests in one volume, there’s Lobscouse & Spotted Dog: Which It’s a Gastronomic Companion to the Aubrey/Maturin Novels. Yes, cooking and Nelson’s Navy. For nothing but cooking, I’ll second The Joy, as Indyellen mentioned above, and agree that the older ones are best. For Naval matters alone, try Naval Warfare in the Age of Sail by Ireland and Gibbons - note that Amazon suggests another book of the same title.
rjk, that first book looks awesome. It’s going on my wishlist. It should make for an entertaining birthday.
The best of the sensational and the serious:
Eating Disorders: A Parents’ Guide by Bryant-Waugh and Lask
Fasting Girls by Joan Brumberg
Overcoming Binge Eating by Fairburn
Big Fat Lies by Glenn Gaesser
I’ll second that.
The critical rationalist approach of Karl Popper seems never to go out of fashion. As events in London this week remind us, we can never discuss things with others too much, never reflect too much. His magnum opus (or contribution to the war effort, as he called it) The Open Society and Its Enemies is provocative and well-written. Remarkable when you consider English was not his first language.
For my profession, Basement by Kate Millett. When she’s not off into her fantasy recreations of what people may have been thinking, it’s a horrifyingly fascinating look at the Sylvia Likens case.
For one of my passions, Chaucer A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work by Rosalyn Rossignol.
For another of my passions, The Genealogy of Greek Mythology: An Illustrated Family Tree of Greek Mythology from the First Gods to the Founders of Rome, by Vanessa James.
And for a third passion, Memories of a Cuban Kitchen: More than 200 Classic Recipes, by Mary Urrutia Urrutia Randelman and Joan Schwartz. I strongly recommend the ensalada de frutas tropicales.