I have a basic understanding of python, but would like to understand really intuitively how recursion works. are there any good introductory books that teach about recursion?
Try a lisp-book, they are often heavy on recursion. One book I see recommended very often is "the little schemer", I want to pick it up some day, it'll teach you about scheme, computation and recursion.
I haven't read any books about recursion itself however, only books that teach recursion amongst other topics.
The book you're looking for is The Little Schemer (just noticed another commenter suggested this as well). Even if you're not that interested in LISP, you'll come away from this book with a solid grasp of "programs as recursive functions." I found that the format of the book lends itself well to reading during a commute. It's easy to pick up and work through a few pages. If you get to a section that you don't understand right away, slow down and make sure you get it before moving forward.
And speaking of DRH (Doug Hofstadter) in his Metamagical Themas collection, the last three (?) chapters are a quick and delightful introduction to Lisp and recursion.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 32.3 ms ] threadI haven't read any books about recursion itself however, only books that teach recursion amongst other topics.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11934434
I also found this book helpful, when I was starting out with experience with imperative languages and thinking iteratively:
https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Recursively-Java-Eric-Robert...
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/little-schemer
Recursion is a very simple concept and really doubt you will find a whole book dedicated to it.
Checkout Computer Systems: A programmers approach
It explains what is happening in memory when you call a function.
It is the most lucid explanation of recursion using the story-telling format.
After working through this chapter, I have never failed to write/understand programs using recursion.
[1] https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/LispBook/