Recommended Background Reading
(concepts and technical / cookbook) "Natural Language Processing in Action: Understanding, Analyzing, and Generating Text with Python", by Hobson Lane, Hannes Hapke, et al. (1st Edition) https://www.amazon.com/Natural-Language-Processing-Action-Understanding/dp/B07X37578L/
(concepts, non-technical) A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence: What It Is, Where We Are, and Where We Are Going by Michael Wooldridge, Glen McCready, et al. https://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-Artificial-Intelligence-Where/dp/B088MMPZ49/ or (concepts, non-technical) Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans (Topic: History & Future of AI) by Melanie Mitchell Pelican (October 15, 2019) https://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Intelligence-Guide-Thinking-Humans/dp/0241404827/
"Natural Language Processing in Action: Understanding, Analyzing, and Generating Text with Python", by Hobson Lane, Hannes Hapke, et al. https://www.amazon.com/Natural-Language-Processing-Action-Understanding/dp/B07X37578L/
Alan Turing : The Enigma (Topic: History & Future of AI) by Andrew Hodges, Simon & Schuster (October 31, 1983) https://www.amazon.com/Alan-Turing-Enigma-Inspired-Imitation/dp/069116472X/
The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann (Topic: History & Future of AI) by Ananyo Bhattacharya https://www.amazon.com/Man-Future-Visionary-Life-Neumann/dp/1324003995/
Designing Data-Intensive Applications: 1st Edition (2017) by Martin Kleppmann https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Data-Intensive-Applications-Reliable-Maintainable/dp/1449373321
Alan Turing : The Enigma (Topic: History & Future of AI) by Andrew Hodges, Simon & Schuster (October 31, 1983) https://www.amazon.com/Alan-Turing-Enigma-Inspired-Imitation/dp/069116472X/
Possible Minds: Twenty-Five Ways of Looking at AI (Topic: History & Future of AI) by John Brockman - editor, et al. https://www.amazon.com/Possible-Minds-audiobook/dp/B07MQX54TW/
The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann (Topic: History & Future of AI) by Ananyo Bhattacharya https://www.amazon.com/Man-Future-Visionary-Life-Neumann/dp/1324003995/
A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman | Jul 17, 2018 https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Play-Shannon-Invented-Information/dp/147676669X/
Software Engineering Education: SEI Conference 1991 (Topic: Serious Need for Communication and Project Management Skills) Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, October 7-8, 1991. Proceedings (Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 536) by James E. Tomayko (Editor) https://www.amazon.com/Software-Engineering-Education-Pennsylvania-Proceedings/dp/3540545026/
The Logician and the Engineer: How George Boole and Claude Shannon Created the Information Age by Paul J. Nahin | Oct 28, 2012 https://www.amazon.com/Logician-Engineer-Shannon-Created-Information-ebook/dp/B0091XBUTM/ (Note: Not an expertly written book, but few books exist on this topic.)
A People's History of Computing in the United States (History of Time-Sharing Networks pre-WWW) by Joy Lisi Rankin, Bernadette Dunne, et al. https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-Computing-United-States/dp/B07HHDFVHM/ (Note: Rambling/ranting introduction is not good, but history content of main text is very good)
A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence: What It Is, Where We Are, and Where We Are Going by Michael Wooldridge, Glen McCready, et al. https://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-Artificial-Intelligence-Where/dp/B088MMPZ49/
AI Narratives: A History of Imaginative Thinking about Intelligent Machines by Stephen Cave - editor, Kanta Dihal - editor, et al. https://www.amazon.com/AI-Narratives-Imaginative-Thinking-Intelligent/dp/0198846665/
Strangers and Intimates: The Rise and Fall of Private Life (Topic: History of Privacy/Security) Tiffany Jenkins [Must Read] https://www.amazon.com/Strangers-Intimates-Rise-Fall-Private/dp/B0CV8365KN/
Cult of the Dead Cow (Topic: History of Computers) by Joseph Menn, Jonathan Davis, et al. https://www.amazon.com/Cult-of-Dead-Cow-Joseph-Menn-audiobook/dp/B07RX456JM
Fancy Bear Goes Phishing: (Topic: History of Computers & cybersecurity)– May 23, 2023 by Scott J. Shapiro https://www.amazon.com/Fancy-Bear-Goes-Phishing-Extraordinary/dp/0374601178 (Excellent)
Alan Turing's Systems of Logic: The Princeton Thesis (Topic: History of Computer Science) by Andrew W. Appel | May 27, 2012 https://www.amazon.com/Alan-Turings-Systems-Logic-Princeton/dp/0691155747
(A set of books about history and the history of the internet, which really ought to be read together.) We Are All Targets: How Renegade Hackers Invented Cyber War and Unleashed an Age of Global Chaos by Matt Potter, Matthew Waterson, et al. https://www.amazon.com/We-Are-All-Targets-Unleashed/dp/B0B831PN81/ + Postwar Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt, Ralph Cosham, et al. https://www.amazon.com/Postwar-History-Europe-Since-1945/dp/B004IDNQOW/ + Thinking the Twentieth Century by Tony Judt, Timothy Snyder, et al. https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-the-Twentieth-Century/dp/B0074JO2SG/ + There Is Nothing For You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century by Fiona Hill https://www.amazon.com/There-Nothing-You-Here-Twenty-First/dp/B08XY9782K/ + Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning by Timothy Snyder, Mark Bramhall, et al. https://www.amazon.com/Black-Earth-Timothy-Snyder-audiobook/dp/B014X6Q80M/ + Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers by Andy Greenberg, Mark Bramhall, et al. https://www.amazon.com/Sandworm-Andy-Greenberg-audiobook/dp/B07RGRTZM6/
The Information (Topic: History of Computers) by James Gleick https://www.amazon.com/Information-History-Theory-Flood/dp/1400096235
The Innovators (Topic: History of Computers) by Walter Isaacson, Dennis Boutsikaris, et al. https://www.amazon.com/The-Innovators-Walter-Isaacson-audiobook/dp/B00M9KICAY/
Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins by Garry Kasparov, May 2, 2017 https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Thinking-Machine-Intelligence-Creativity/dp/161039786X/
Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet by Claire L. Evans, Jul 7, 2020 https://www.amazon.com/Broad-Band-Untold-Story-Internet/dp/0593329449/
Proving Ground: The Untold Story of the Six Women Who Programmed the World's First Modern Computer, by Kathy Kleiman, Erin Bennett, et al. July 26, 2022 https://www.amazon.com/Proving-Ground-Untold-Programmed-Computer/dp/B09KK1QHKM/
Technology and the Academics: an Essay on Universities and the Scientific Revolution by Eric Ashby, 1958 (Classic, must read history of STEM book.) https://www.amazon.com/Technology-Academics-Universities-Scientific-Revolution/dp/1014404819 https://www.amazon.com/technology-Academics-Eric-Ashby/dp/B003F8DMPO/
(Perhaps my favorite, most re-read, most-recommended overall AI book. The focus is NLP, but it is a great (the best?) general Data Science book, as it is so well written.) Natural Language Processing in Action: Understanding, Analyzing, and Generating Text with Python by Hobson Lane, Hannes Hapke, et al. https://www.amazon.com/Natural-Language-Processing-Action-Understanding/dp/B07X37578L/
(Note: This is a must-read as Francois Chollet created Keras.) Deep Learning with Python, Second Edition by Francois Chollet | Dec 21, 2021 https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Python-Second-Fran%C3%A7ois-Chollet/dp/1617296864/
build-a-large-language-model-from-scratch (Topic: Pytorch NLP foundation model making, fine tuning, classification-heads) by Sebastian Raschka Sept 2024 https://www.manning.com/books/build-a-large-language-model-from-scratch https://www.amazon.com/Build-Large-Language-Model-Scratch/dp/1633437167
Natural Language Processing in Action, Second Edition by Hobson Lane and Maria Dyshel | Feb 25, 2025 https://www.manning.com/books/natural-language-processing-in-action-second-edition https://www.amazon.com/Natural-Language-Processing-Action-Second/dp/1617299448/
Rebooting AI (Topic: Comparing AI model performance) by Gary Marcus, Ernest Davis, et al. https://www.amazon.com/Rebooting-AI-Building-Artificial-Intelligence/dp/052556604X
Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans (Topic: History & Future of AI) by Melanie Mitchell Pelican (October 15, 2019) https://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Intelligence-Guide-Thinking-Humans/dp/0241404827/
Complexity: A Guided Tour (Topic: Nonlinearity, Dynamical Systems, "Complexity") by Melanie Mitchell Oxford University Press (2009) https://www.amazon.com/Audible-Complexity-A-Guided-Tour/dp/B09SND3L5D/
Deep Learning (Adaptive Computation and Machine Learning series) (Deep Learning) by Ian Goodfellow , Yoshua Bengio , et al. https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Learning-Adaptive-Computation-Machine/dp/0262035618/
How to Change Your Mind (Topic: mind & consciousness research) by Michael Pollan and Penguin Audio https://www.amazon.com/How-to-Change-Your-Mind-audiobook/dp/B07B1V3RF5
The Brain That Changes Itself (Topic: mind & consciousness research) by Norman Doidge M.D., Jim Bond, et al. https://www.amazon.com/Brain-That-Changes-Itself-Frontiers/dp/B001ANZW0O
The Brain's Way of Healing: Frontiers of Neuroplasticity (Topic: mind & consciousness research) by Norman Doidge, George Newbern, et al. https://www.amazon.com/The-Brains-Way-of-Healing-audiobook/dp/B00RC527CU
How to Create a Mind (Topic: Mind and consciousness research) by Ray Kurzweil, Christopher Lane, et al. https://www.amazon.com/How-Create-Mind-Thought-Revealed/dp/1491518839
When Einstein Walked with Gödel (Assorted Essays Involving Data & Statistics) by Jim Holt, David Stifel, et al. https://www.amazon.com/When-Einstein-Walked-with-Gdel-audiobook/dp/B07CZMGMFZ
An Introduction to Genetic Algorithms (Complex Adaptive Systems)
(Wonderful book written in the late 90's so it covers familiar territory but outside of the buzzwords and echochamber of ~2020 discussion, very illuminating and refreshing.)
by Melanie Mitchell
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0262133164
Analogy-Making as Perception: A Computer Model (Neural Network Modeling and Connectionism)
by Melanie Mitchell
https://www.amazon.com/Analogy-Making-Perception-Computer-Modeling-Connectionism/dp/026251544X/
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid Paperback – February 5, 1999 by Douglas R Hofstadter https://www.amazon.com/G%C3%B6del-Escher-Bach-Eternal-Golden/dp/0465026567/
The Tipping Point: (Assorted Essays Involving Data & Statistics) by Malcolm Gladwell https://www.amazon.com/The-Tipping-Point-audiobook/dp/B000OYD8T2
Outliers: The Story of Success (Assorted Essays Involving Data & Statistics) by Malcolm Gladwell https://www.amazon.com/Outliers-Malcolm-Gladwell-audiobook/dp/B001LNK9C4/
Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Joe Ochman, et al. https://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Nassim-Nicholas-Taleb-audiobook/dp/B00A2ZIZYQ
Predictably Irrational (Topic: Mind and consciousness research) by Dan Ariely https://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-Revised-Expanded-Decisions/dp/0061353248/
The Undoing Project (Topic: Mind and consciousness research) by Michael Lewis, Dennis Boutsikaris, et al https://www.amazon.com/The-Undoing-Project-Michael-Lewis-audiobook/dp/B01KBM82M4/
Thinking, Fast and Slow (Topic: Mind and consciousness research) by Daniel Kahneman, Patrick Egan, et al. https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-and-Slow-audiobook/dp/B005Z9GAJG/
Social Engineering (Where computer science and behavioral neuroscience meet) by Christopher Hadnagy | Jul 31, 2018 https://www.amazon.com/Social-Engineering-Science-Human-Hacking/dp/111943338X
Real Magic (Topic: Mind and consciousness research) by Dean Radin, Mark Bramhall, et al. https://www.amazon.com/Real-Magic-Dean-Radin-audiobook/dp/B07BGCQDR2/
And...since you can't study DS with statistics, and you can't study statistics without studying economics, and you can't study economics without the history of economics:
Economic Thought Before Adam Smith : History of Economic Thought (Vol. 1)
by Murray N. Rothbard
https://www.amazon.com/Economic-Thought-Before-Adam-Smith/dp/1852789611
&
Classical Economics : History of Economic Thought Vol.2)
by Murray N. Rothbard
https://www.amazon.com/Classical-Economics-Austrian-Perspective-Economic-ebook/dp/B003H4R8N8
And since understanding the roots of common terminology and concepts can be so important:
Aristotle's Political Theory: An Introduction for Students of Political Theory
by R. G. Mulgan
https://www.amazon.com/Aristotles-Political-Theory-Introduction-Students/dp/0198274165
A New Kind of Science (Survey of Cellular Automata including CA-based Modeling)
by Stephen Wolfram
https://www.amazon.com/New-Kind-Science-Stephen-Wolfram-ebook/dp/B01N1I83V8/
Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data (Survey of statistics concepts/applications) Part of: Naked Series (3 Books) | by Charles Wheelan https://www.amazon.com/Naked-Statistics-Stripping-Dread-Data/dp/039334777X
The Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Society, 1250-1600 (History of Science)
by Alfred W. Crosby
https://www.amazon.com/Measure-Reality-Quantification-Western-1250-1600/dp/0521639905
Descartes' Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason (History of Science)
by Russell Shorto
https://www.amazon.com/Descartes-Bones-Skeletal-History-Conflict/dp/0307275663
Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress (Data & Society)
by Steven Pinker
https://www.amazon.com/Enlightenment-Now-Science-Humanism-Progress/dp/0143111388
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (Data Society History)
by Jared Diamond
https://www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-and-Steel-audiobook/dp/B004JLTPTI
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (Data Society History) by Jared Diamond https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Jared-Diamond-audiobook/dp/B00P2QCN2U
The World Until Yesterday (Data Society History) by Jared Diamond https://www.amazon.com/World-Until-Yesterday-Traditional-Societies-ebook/dp/B008EKOO46
The Rise and Fall of American Growth (Data Society History) by Robert J. Gordon https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-American-Growth-Princeton/dp/0691147728/
Escape from Model Land: How Mathematical Models Can Lead Us Astray and What We Can Do About It by Erica Thompson | Dec 6, 2022 https://www.amazon.com/Escape-Model-Land-Mathematical-Models/dp/1541600983/ (Note: The chapter on the history of weather-prediction is a must, even if you don't like the rest of the book.)
Thinking in Systems: by Donella H. Meadows and Diana Wright | Dec 3, 2008 https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Systems-Donella-H-Meadows/dp/1603580557/
Cosmosapiens: Human Evolution from the Origin of the Universe by John Hands | Aug 16, 2022b https://www.amazon.com/Cosmosapiens-Human-Evolution-Origin-Universe-ebook/dp/B07MW8T7LB/
The History of the Future: Oculus, Facebook, and the Revolution That Swept Virtual Reality by Blake J. Harris, Stephen Graybill, et al. https://www.amazon.com/The-History-of-Future-audiobook/dp/B07J1Q7GVW/
Virtual Society: The Metaverse and the New Frontiers of Human Experience by Herman Narula and Random House Audio https://www.amazon.com/Virtual-Society-Metaverse-Frontiers-Experience/dp/B09SGXT539/
The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy by Sharon Bertsch McGrayne https://www.amazon.com/The-Theory-That-Would-Not-Die-audiobook/dp/B007PXLU3G/
The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail - but Some Don't by Nate Silver, Mike Chamberlain, et al. https://www.amazon.com/The-Signal-and-Noise-Nate-Silver-audiobook/dp/B009HL6444/
Significant Figures: The Lives and Work of Great Mathematicians by Ian Stewart, Roger Clark, et al. https://www.amazon.com/Significant-Figures-Ian-Stewart-audiobook/dp/B0757S1XTJ/
Designing Data-Intensive Applications: 1st Edition (2017) [Must Read] by Martin Kleppmann https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Data-Intensive-Applications-Reliable-Maintainable/dp/1449373321
Database Internals: A Deep Dive into How Distributed Data Systems Work 1st Edition by Alex Petrov https://www.amazon.com/Database-Internals-Deep-Distributed-Systems/dp/1492040347
Rust Atomics and Locks: Low-Level Concurrency in Practice by Mara Bos | Feb 7, 2023 https://www.amazon.com/Rust-Atomics-Locks-Low-Level-Concurrency/dp/1098119444/
Implementing Hardware-Friendly Databases (with DuckDB co-creator, Hannes Mühleisen) Developer Voices https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZV9FvdKmLc
C Programming Language, 2nd Edition by Brian W. Kernighan (Author), Dennis M. Ritchie (Author) https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Language-2nd-Brian-Kernighan/dp/0131103628/
Rust in Action by Tim McNamara | Aug 10, 2021 https://www.amazon.com/Rust-Action-TS-McNamara/dp/1617294551/
Statistics with Rust, Second Edition: Explore rust programming and its powerful crates across data science, machine learning and NLP projects by Keiko Nakamura (Author) https://www.amazon.com/Machine-Learning-Rust-Second-Implement-ebook/dp/B0H5FTCZN2/
Machine Learning with Rust, Second Edition: Implement data pipelines, classical models, deep learning and NLP using burn, candle, linfa and smartcore by Keiko Nakamura (Author) https://www.amazon.com/Statistics-Rust-Second-programming-powerful-ebook/dp/B0DMWTL265/
Hacker's Delight by Henry Warren | Sep 25, 2012 https://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Delight-2nd-Henry-Warren/dp/0321842685/
C Courses on Udemy https://www.udemy.com/course/c-programming-for-beginners-/ https://www.udemy.com/course/advanced-c-programming-course/
Command-Line Rust: A Project-Based Primer for Writing Rust CLIs by Ken Youens-Clark | Feb 22, 2022 https://www.amazon.com/Command-Line-Rust-Project-Based-Primer-Writing/dp/1098109430/
TinyML: Machine Learning with TensorFlow Lite on Arduino and Ultra-Low-Power Microcontrollers by Pete Warden (Author), Daniel Situnayake (Author) https://www.amazon.com/TinyML-Learning-TensorFlow-Ultra-Low-Power-Microcontrollers/dp/1492052043
Smaller C: Lean Code for Small Machines by Marc Loy https://www.amazon.com/Smaller-Lean-Code-Small-Machines/dp/1098100336
Chris Lattner on production data science Developer Voices https://www.youtube.com/@DeveloperVoices "Mojo Lang - Tomorrow's High Performance Python? (with Chris Lattner)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRcXUuQYR90&t=2810s
CppCon 2018: Matt Godbolt “The Bits Between the Bits: How We Get to main()” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOfucXtyEsU