Reddit mentions of The Science and Engineering of Materials

If you are not a metallurgist I would suggest you start with an intro to metallurgy or materials science book. I used the book below when I got my metallurgical engineering degree and had the author as a professor. I thought he put most things in easy to understand terms.

https://www.amazon.com/Science-Engineering-Materials-Donald-Askeland/dp/0495296023

During my materials engineering BEng I found the following books to be quite useful as general reference and self learning for the first two years.

Askeland: http://www.amazon.com/Science-Engineering-Materials-Donald-Askeland/dp/0495296023/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1408623880&sr=8-1&keywords=askeland+materials
(I bought this book for only $1 second hand off of abebooks.com)

Callister: http://www.amazon.com/Materials-Science-Engineering-An-Introduction/dp/1118324579/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1408624073&sr=8-1&keywords=callister+materials
(Callister is very useful although lacks information on metallurgy since it is only an introduction book)

For metals and alloys I found these to be the most useful:

Reardon: http://www.amazon.com/Metallurgy-Non-Metallurgist-Second-Edition-05306G/dp/1615038213/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1408624192&sr=8-2&keywords=metallurgy

Polmear: http://www.amazon.com/Light-Alloys-Metallurgy-Material-Science/dp/0340491752/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1408624234&sr=8-2&keywords=polmear+light+alloys

I hope this helps