Reddit mentions: The best geography books

Alright so if I had to recommend a singular book, it would be (Pragmatism: Critical Concepts in Philosophy)[ https://www.amazon.com/Pragmatism-Critical-Philosophy-Russell-Goodman/dp/0415288495]. It has a good overview of the entire pragmatist movement from the classical to the neo-pragmatists.

If you want specifics it’s a little harder, but I can try. I’ll try to avoid saying “read the entirety of their works,” and point you to specific sections or papers.

Peirce is amazing (glance at his wiki), no question about it. One of the greatest polymaths ever, in my books, but that’s part of the problem. He’s covered so much, and a lot of his writing presumes a strong basis in formal logic/math. I’m not sure if you do or don’t have that. So I’ll recommend two texts to you. The first is the Routledge profile on him. I’m a big fan of Routledge companion readers, and I admit I’ve never read this specific book. BUT, I recommended this to an ex, and she said it was a really great read. If you want a specific paper, I’d recommend “Some Consequences of Four Incapacities.” It provides a basic overview of the pragmatist project, many of the themes found here will be echoed throughout the tradition.

So I’m not a great fan of William James myself, but others tell me he’s amazing. I’d suggest picking up The Writings of William James Comprehensive Edition. Focus on sections 2 and 3, and read the essays “The Stream of Thought,” “The Will to Believe” (its really similar to the previous Peirce paper I recommended) and “Necessary Truths and the Effects of Experience.”

I like John Dewey a lot myself and would recommend a lot of his work, but I'll limit myself to two texts by him: “Studies in Logical Theory" and "The Quest for Certainty.” With all that said, I should mention that some of what the classical pragmatists argue for has shown to be quite problematic. I would read them more of their themes, but that’s just my opinion.

Moving onto the conventionalists, I found something rather brilliant. This is a link to a publically published chapter, prior to editing and uploaded by the author, of a book covering the conventionalists on academia.edu. I skim read it, and it’s a good overview and assumes very little background familiarity and eschews overly technical language on the part of the reader.

The Neo-pragmatists are a little trickier for me. I’m not that familiar with Rorty, I must admit. That said, his most famous text is “Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature,” which I believe contains most of his views. IDK, even that recommendation is really no better than me saying “read his SEP or IEP page," I'm coming from a place of ignorance.

With regards to Putnam, he’s sort of a pragmatist in denial, or a more appropriate way would be to say that he’s not a “full-blooded” pragmatist. He’s written quite a bit of commentary on the classical pragmatists, and he’s also written quite a lot on some interesting topics. Two texts that come to mind are “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’” and “Realism with a Human Face.” Putnam’s a rather fun guy to read and I’d recommend reading up on the change(s) he made in his philosophical life.

Robert Brandom, haven’t read much of him. But I would recommend “Making it Explicit.”

Concerning Quine… well I can recommend this. You can of course check out his famous “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” paper, and “Word and Object” (if you got the time), but there’s a really good “overview” of sorts, given by Paul Boghossian in his paper "Analyticity Reconsidered".

Other great pragmatists or philosophers that are related to the movement, include: CI Lewis (modal logic, attack on moderate foundationalism, etc.) Philip Kitcher (my experience of Rorty being largely composed of what I assume are caricatures, he seems to be the sensible Rorty), Wittgenstein (later Wittgenstein proves rather influential- especially his general method), and Carnap (one can see it in his goal for what a scientific language ought to be, and his principle of tolerance.). Pragmatism is a rather odd thing, it's not exactly easy to pick out what makes one a pragmatist or not. From what I can see it's normally a rejection of a priori metaphysics, naturalism, support of science, and a concern that all our conceptual resources be of some practical use. I hope all this helped. And if I got anything wrong/missed out on a crucial text/author please feel free to point out.

Hey there young NatSci! I'm studying double Geology and Materials Science in Pt 1B. I actually didn't really like Earth Sciences that much - I'd always wanted to be a physicist - and didn't work concentrate on it for the first two terms. Rock identification? Ha! "Um, is it a granite...?" The year progresses with me seeming ever behind until the Arran trip just after Lent term. Seeing things in the field really helped me get a better idea of how things connected, and what the point of all these rocks and maps were. I started to 'get it', and now I really love the subject.

Now that's not saying you will have this experience. Most of my friends who switched to geology decided to do so after Arran, but many stuck with Physics. They could have probably failed Earth Sciences and been okay, as long as they passed overall.

Also, it isn't necessary to remember all the details from every lecture. I didn't really look at paeleobiology (Lent and Easter term) at all during revision. It isn't an area I'm comfortable with and you don't have to answer a question on it in the written paper, though you will have to identify fossils and their modes of life, habitats etc. in the practical exam.

Final tip - and this is one that was passed onto me pretty late despite it being an amazing help for just about the entire course - buy a used copy of the OCR Geology A Level textbook - OCR AS and A2 Geology Student Book https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0435692119/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_-kOAub021C3D8. This is pretty expensive so search on eBay too. It covers just about the entire 1A course in almost enough detail for the exam and is a brilliant revision guide. Also of use is 'A Colour Atlas of Rocks and Minerals in Thin Section' by MacKenzie and Adams. This is great if you're having trouble identifying rocks using the microscopes and might be available from your college library; the Earth Sciences library should definitely have a copy and is a really lovely place. Sarah the librarian is one of the nicest people you'll meet in Cambridge!

Finally, if you have any more questions, worries or just want to chat to someone who's been through the same course just last year, then please send me a private message. I'm very happy to help! Hope you enjoy things more in the future.

Edit: added some library info

Worthwhile books from my shelf (note that my shelf has a particular flavor):

• The Geography of Nowhere - James Howard Kunstler
  
• Almost Anything by James Howard Kunstler
  
• "A Pattern Language" and "The Timeless Way of Building" - Christopher Alexander
  
• Almost Anything By Christopher Alexander
  
• Cities and the Wealth of Nations - Jane Jacobs
  
• Anything by Jane Jacobs
  
• How Buildings Learn - Stewart Brand
  
• The High Cost of Free Parking - Donald Shoup
  
• Carfree Cities, and the Carfree Design Manual
  
• Planetizen Essential Urban Planning Reader
  
• Routledge Urban and Regional Planning Reader
  
• You can also look up university planning courses and see what is in their readers and book lists.
  
• Watch some TED Talks
  
• Read through MIT's OpenCourseWare materials on Urban Planning
  
  
  There are LOTS off different inroads to the planning profession. You may want to start narrowing your focus- "Urban Planning" is a multivariate discipline, encompassing land use, modeling, transit, transportation, redevelopment, ecological design, and many other fields. There are also gov't agencies, nonprofits, and for-profit companies. Are there any organizations or projects that you feel especially drawn to? Send your resume and a cover letter to them. Better yet, look them up, learn about who they are and what they do, and apply for any open internship solicitations.
  
  Think about what you like to do. Do you want to work with GIS/mapping/modeling? Do you enjoy legal issues? Do you like public outreach?
  
  There is an Urban Studies department at UT Austin. Urban Studies does not necessarily mean "Planning" though- it's often more like "Sociology of the City" which might not be what you need. Talk to an advisor in the department and talk to some students at different levels within the department.
  
  APA is the big planning professional organization. They have discounted student memberships and they have a chapter in your area. GO TO THEIR EVENTS. Follow their twitter.
  
  Follow your local planning agencies- transportation, regional, city, etc. Learn who is on what board. Read their agendas and minutes. Know what projects are going on and what projects are in the pipeline. Find a planner who is managing a project you are interested in and offer to take them to lunch/coffee. Do this once per week. Planners love lunch and coffee and they love to talk about their projects, especially if you make clear that you are not press and not just working on a school project.
  
  Dress well. Be confident.
  
  That should get you started. These some of the things I did, and some of the things I wish I had done, at the beginning of my career.
  
  [edited so many times because I can't help myself and I never remember Reddit formatting]
  

To start, don't read Jane Jacobs. This is planner blasphemy, but her stuff is old (albeit relevant) concepts, and while her ideas are generally good, you can get much more rewarding information from other modern reading -- most of which includes her ideas.

A couple that are relevant to your interests:

• The High Cost of Free Parking -- Shoup
  
• Context Sensitive Design for Thoroughfares -- ITE
  
• One Less Car - Furness ----- this one can be a bit preachy, but is good overall.
  
• If you're going to be working the 'burbs, This Book is invaluable. Amazing for historical context.
  
  If you're looking for more technical stuff, I can provide recommendations there, too.
  
  Growth management reading is SUPER valuable to any planner's career over the next couple of decades, at least.
  
  Law helps, too.

Check out the Princeton Field Guide. It's really nice and around $20. If you're looking for the spiritual side of things, I don't have the know-how to provide a recommendation but if you're interested in the mineral themselves you may like it. It has lots of beautiful images and the descriptions are really good. They'll tell you the environments where they form, what their crystal systems look like, how they tend to break (you'll want to know that for drilling your holes and such - I imagine you'd drill perpendicular to cleavage for less fracture).

As far as fancy rock names, you'll just put that together with experience. You can pick up an old edition Earth by Tarbuck for $10 online and that'll tell you all of your basics and from there you can easily branch out.

It can be confusing and frustrating at first, but just keep at it and it'll all come together with some experience. I can recommend things for days, but those books really helped me get a grip on the variety.

If you have any other questions, I'm super happy to help!

Princeton: http://www.amazon.com/Minerals-World-Princeton-Field-Guides/dp/069109537X

Earth: http://www.amazon.com/Earth-Introduction-Physical-Geology-8th/dp/0131148656/ref=sr_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407769493&sr=1-9&keywords=earth+tarbuck

I have a variety of books to recommend.
Brushing up on your foundations:
http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Functional-Analysis-Karen-Saxe/dp/0387952241
If you get this from your library or browse inside of it and it seems easy there are then three books to look at:

1. http://www.amazon.com/Functional-Analysis-Introduction-Princeton-Lectures/dp/0691113874/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1368475848&sr=1-4&keywords=functional+analysis challenging exercises for sure.
   
2. http://www.amazon.com/Introductory-Functional-Analysis-Applications-Kreyszig/dp/0471504599/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1368475848&sr=1-2&keywords=functional+analysis (A great expositor)
   
3. Rudin's Functional Analysis (A challenging book for sure)
   
   More advanced level:
   
4. http://www.amazon.com/Functional-Analysis-Introduction-Graduate-Mathematics/dp/0821836463/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top
   (An awesome book with exercise solutions that will really get you thinking)
   
   Working on this book and Rudin's (which has many exercise solutions available online is very helpful) would be a very strong advanced treatment before you go into the more specialized topics.
   
   The key to learning this sort of subject is to not delude yourself into thinking you understand things that you really don't. Leave your pride at the door and accept that the SUMS book may be the best starting point. Also remember to use the library at your institution, don't just buy all these books.

Sigh.

Anyone who throws there hands up and says "lolwut, itz too complicated i dunno!" is not a skeptic. Do you honestly think that climate scientists don't study natural phenomena like the ones on this list and try to understand their causes and implications? This post is especially pathetic, but it's literally just a list of natural phenomena; if you think think this stuff is what makes the climate complex, then you literally don't know anything about atmospheric science.

You might want to start with the following textbooks, which any climate scientist will have devoured by the time they have a Masters -

• Global Physical Climatology
  
  
• An Introduction to Dynamic Meteorology
  
  
• Atmosphere, Ocean, and Climate Dynamics
  
  
• Atmospheric Science: an Introductory Survey
  
  
• Fundamentals of Large Scale Circulation
  
  
• Dynamics and Ice Sheets of Glaciers
  
  
• Microphysics of Clouds and Precipitation
  
  There are, of course, higher level textbooks on my shelf as well. The majority of the stuff on this list is basic stuff that an undergraduate would be exposed to. It doesn't even scratch the surface of what our science is actually about.
  
  EDIT TO ADD -
  For example, geostrophy is this list. Do you know what geostrophic motion is? It's motion where the only forces acting on a parcel are the Coriolis force and the pressure gradient force. How do you get to geostrophic motion? Well, on the first day of your Junior year as a meteorology student, you start taking Atmospheric Dynamics. Your professor throws Navier-Stokes on the board and says "This is what we need to solve to figure out how the atmosphere works." Then he mentions that there is a million dollar prize for working with that equation and says "okay, let's see if we can simplify things." After that, you spend a few lectures deriving atmospheric motion following Holton, Lindzen, or Serreze - talking about the Rossby radius, coordinate transformations, Eulerian vs. Lagrangian and material derivatives, and path integrals through moving reference frames.
  
  Ultimately you re-derive equations of motion from scratch starting with F=ma, and arrive at a 3D set of equations where motion is determined by terms relating to the pressure gradient, accelerations, friction, gravity, and the Coriolis force. Then, you scale analyze the terms of the equations to see what the dominating terms are, given certain assumptions.
  
  Assume you're above the PBL; then, friction is negligible. You'll immediately see that acceleration/velocity-related terms are an order of magnitude smaller than the other terms. Assume hydrostatic balance and there is no acceleration in the vertical, truncating your motion to two dimensions. You're left with a balance of forces in both your basis vectors - pressure gradient and coriolis. Balance these two and you can solve for a balanced flow called geostrophic flow. Geostrophic flow is super-simple and only really works as an approximation for upper-level flows with small curvature (i.e. you need features larger than the Rossby radius of deformation or else the assumptions about 2D velocity are invalid). But it's a great learning tool for meteorology students to get their hands dirty with the math, and derive from first principles why flow is counter-clockwise around Low Pressures in the northern hemisphere.
  
  Relax some assumptions and you can also get gradient flow or cyclostrophic flow.
  
  You can't do any meteorology with these flows, though - you need at least to relax geostrophy and derive quasi-geostrophy with the aid of the circulation and divergence theorems to actually get vertical motion which is diagnosable from thermodynamics and fluid dynamics.
  
  Anything else from the domain of the atmospheric science that the skeptics here want explained? Now's your chance.

I'm about to graduate in Geography (GIS) from a very, very human/critical theory focused dept at state school.

My favorite GIS text so far has been Nicholas Chrisman's Exploring Geographic Information Systems. It's not super exciting, but it's kind of historical, covers a huge number of basic elements of information science, and situates it as technical discipline that serves/is grounded in socio-political things. Great for people who've seen the very basics of clip/overlay/make layer in a GIS, but don't have much understanding of the why/how.

Plus there are no fucking screenshots of software menus.

If you've never seen those on a screen, try Price's Mastering ArcGIS series, comes with data and is basically just lots of long, in-depth tutorials. No need to buy the newest version, the software doesn't change that quickly.

It's not a 'beginner' book per se, but a pretty comprehensive coverage of the concepts of Nature and the nature of geography in anglophone traditions plus a number of historical and current takes on the matter: Noel Castree's Nature.

For those interested in scripting/Python with ArcGIS, I can recommend Zandbergen's Python Scripting for ArcGIS and Pimpler's Programming ArcGIS 10.1 with Python Cookbook. The former is a textbook proper, teaches some theory, lots of contextual (in terms of the program) information, the later is much more of a straight recipe/how to, with a few pointers about how things might get messed up or why you're seeing that error in that place.

> And don't listen to an audiobook. You need to be able to read slowly and carefully and re-read to get this stuff. I love audiobooks but they don't work well for me beyond fiction.

Yeah, I'm thinking that's probably a big part of why most of the abstract theory went over my head. The history was easy to understand, but history is generally presented in the form of a story.

Thanks for the recommendation. "Spaces of Hope" looks like a good book, too.

Seriously?! Not one person mentioned Renato Rosaldo's Culture and Truth?! It was probably one of the most important books of the 20th century. Rosaldo and his late wife really changed the way ethnographic work was conducted and presented.

While I am a huge fan of Geertz, I recommend reading Victor Turner's The Ritual Process. I am currently re-reading it, and it is not hard to see how the books was truly ahead of its time. Turner may not be as seductive as a writer as Geertz, but his insights are just as amazing.

And for a pretty fun, but slightly out-dated, ethnography Anne Allison's Nightwork is a sick book. It is an ethnography about Japanese salarymen and hostesses.

Hey, sorry for such a huge delay, it was a very busy time at work and I haven't had the chance to gather my thoughts up until now.

Bear in mind - most of the journal sources that I provide are behind a paywall unless accessed from an academic institution with an active subscription.

So, to start, some general reading on the Soviet employment and unemployment - Work, Employment and Unemployment in the Soviet Union by J. L. Porket, and his accompanying article on the same subject - "Full employment in Soviet theory and practice". Another good book on the subject is "Employment Planning in the Soviet Union: Continuity and Change" by Silvana Malle. A general overview of employment practices in the countries of the Eastern Bloc, if a bit outdated - "Employment Policies in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe", edited by Jan Adam.

Another good general source is this report on unemployment in the Soviet Union from 1992, which provides a lot of useful general info.

This article, "Unemployment in the Soviet Union: Evidence from the Soviet Interview Project", provides a good statistical overview of some of the major trends.

As for the people with disabilities, here is a good general article on the topic of disability in the Soviet Union - ""There Are No Invalids in the USSR!": A Missing Soviet Chapter in the New Disability History" by Sarah D. Phillips.

Also, these two works edited by Michael Rasell and Elena Iarskaia-Smirnova, and William O. McCagg and Lewis Siegelbaum respectively - "Disability in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union: history, policy and everyday life" and "The Disabled in the Soviet Union: Past and Present, Theory and Practice". I haven't personally looked at the second one, but one of the editors did publish and help edit some interesting works on the subject before, and, judging by the contents, it should be interesting and applicable.

Skurka's book is good (likely the best way to get up to speed on gear), and his blog is excellent as well.

Other books I like:

• Lighten Up!: A Complete Handbook For Light And Ultralight Backpacking (Falcon Guide) (A bit old, but still a classic and the other "Allen and Mike's" books are also good.
  
• Lyle Brotherton's Ultimate Navigation Manual
  
• NOLS Wilderness Medicine (Be careful; the Kindle instance is actually an old version.)
  
  For current information, these subreddits and sites like BackpackingLight will get you up to speed.
  

edexcel geo: physics and maths tutor!! also these student guides:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Edexcel-level-Geography-Student-Guide/dp/1471863158/ref=asc_df_1471863158/?tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=310872601819&hvpos=1o2&hvnetw=g&hvrand=12713649797160185047&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9044936&hvtargid=pla-324906640259&psc=1&th=1&psc=1 which i found to be good too. although the case studies might be different to yours, so i suggest making mindmaps/fact files for them.

as for chem and bio, i do ocr a for both, but maybe try the website seneca? it's good to sum up content, i wouldn't rely on it wholly but it gives you a nice summary on the topics :)

The Ultimate Navigation Manual is one of the best reference books to any skill that I have ever encountered, very clearly written with tons of clear photographs and illustrations to help depict concepts. I highly recommend it to anyone that might have need of navigation skills.

General historical geography books that are good:

Key Concepts in Historical Geography

Hodder Arnold Historical Geography (and in general I've found Hodder Arnold review texts to be useful.)

For books that are works of historical geography, broadly defined:

Late Victorian Holocausts (I actually found this book a bit disappointing, but a lot of people like it.)

The Hungry World (actually written by a historian so not very embedded in historical geography theoretically but very much in the same spirit which might be useful for you.)

American Commodities in an Age of Empire (Mona Domosh is currently president of the AAG.)

For the theory of/in geography:

For Space

This syllabus from Rutgers covers a lot of the most essential texts in human geography. I think you could skip the books and stick just to the articles and still have a really good understanding of the field.

Also, I used Mastering ArcGIS by Maribeth Price in my class. She does a really good job getting you started with ArcGIS. Even if it's a lot more "click this, then this, then this, then this" you still somehow get to know what you're actually doing pretty quickly. GIS really is a fun hobby if you have an interest in maps. There are SO many possibilities.

There are a ton of starting points.

At the core you have:

Great Learning - Chapter from The Book of Rites, small Confucius section with 9 commentary sections from his disciple, Zengzi.

Doctrine of the Mean - written by the grandson of Confucius and adopted into the c

Analects - pure Confucianism, every word supposedly taken from the works of his disciples. It's very important to get a good commentary on this text. Lau is the traditional version and Dawson is generally picked as the next best. There's also a fantastic commentary from Neo-Confucianist Zhu Xi translated by Daniel Gardner.

Mencius - A later scholar, who learned from Zengzi. He had a slightly different take on things. A must read if you want to study the evolution of Confucianism through the ages.

In addition I would add my former professor's work:
Utilitarian Confucianism: Ch'en Liang's Challenge to Chu Hsi if you want to see the conflicts and divisions in Confucian thought.

I'm currently reading a book called Geography (that's the Amazon link) it's wonderful and links almost every strand of Geography and how they all relate to each other. It's also not very long or complex and a very easy read :)

I'd read about it in Terry Glavin's The Last Great Sea

He gets into other, less documented arrivals as well - in various places around BC, natives have pre-Columbian stories of white guys showing up with big beards, speaking strange languages. Glavin's major area of interest is the Bering-Strait hunter migration theory. It's a fun, well-argued and well-written book.

I recommend Minerals of the World by Ole Johnsen. I had to get this as a required text for my mineralogy class. It has mineral tables in the back, grouped by metallic/nonmetallic luster and ordered by hardness in order of softest to hardest. Also in the tables is the page number the main entry is on, so once you've identified the mineral, you can compare it to pictures in the text and view other information on it, such as economic importance. It's also cheap, so it'll set you back less than $20.00 on Amazon.

Hope this helped!

I'd say /u/MaceWumpus got it right.

If you want to know the details, I'd recommend this book. It's--in my opinion, at least--a really nice, readable introduction to Quine's ideas.

Yup. Now it's up to $55. Still a great deal IMo, especially since there are many available on loan to students.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Statistical-Problem-Solving-Geography/dp/1478611197&ved=2ahUKEwi09NT5mKrgAhWIq1kKHZtNAq0QFjABegQIBhAB&usg=AOvVaw2rMC6g9wmIxWi6roAt3Erk

This is the book I used in college for all my GIS courses. Highly recommend it.

http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Statistical-Problem-Solving-Geography/dp/1478611197

You're welcome! You might also consider volume 3 and volume 4 of the analysis series by Stein and Shakarchi. There's also a great book by Tom Lindstrøm on the prerequisites to functional analysis, but it might be too basic for your needs.