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Ask HN: What are some good general technical books for teenagers?

6 points by lovemath ↗ HN
I'm a programmer by profession. I have a teenage daughter with a general interest in art and biology. She does well in math and science in school but isn't very enthusiastic about computers or technology.

I'd like to find some good general books about technical subjects for her. Unfortunately the selection at local bookstores is rather limited and their books are either too simplistic, too specific or both.

I know there are plenty of good programming books available but I'm not looking for books on programming per se as I already have a few shelves of books like SICP, TLoL, PiP, AMOP, etc. as well as more abstract works like GEB and she's shown no interest in those as of yet.

What I've been hoping to find is something that covers technology more generally: something that explains some interesting way a particular physical, chemical, mathematical or other technical principle appears in some network or system of machines and structures we build and maintain.

Can any similarly minded parents out there share any success stories?

11 comments

[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 31.1 ms ] thread
vezzy-fnord
What else but Charles Petzold's phenomenal classic CODE: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software? [1]

http://www.charlespetzold.com/code/ [1]

lovemath
The sample chapter seems too simplistic so I'm not sure my daughter would find it interesting, but I'm curious - do you know any teenagers who liked it?
dkuntz2
It's not simplistic at all.

I'm currently a junior in college, and I read this last year by suggestion of another student who said it was an excellent precursor to our college's Computer Organization course (haven't taken it yet, so I don't know). It was also one of the books given to one of the CS department's Outstanding Seniors last year.

The beginning is a little slow if you know some physics, but it picks up and gets really interesting.

vezzy-fnord
Yes.

It's not simplistic at all. It's easy to understand, but it goes fairly in depth as to the internals of computing.

It has a very incremental approach. It starts with Morse code, Braille, numbering systems, moves on to logic gates, Boolean logic until it reaches microprocessors, character encoding, operating systems and finally some notes on high-level languages.

It's renowned as a classic anywhere you go. Very entertaining, too. It has a casual writing style.

lovemath
Perhaps simplistic is the wrong word. To me the sample chapter[1] doesn't seem like it would be very engaging for my daughter since she's only perhiperally interested in things that lead to computing. But thanks for the recommendation and I'll take a closer look if I see it on the shelf.

[1] http://www.microsoft.com/mspress/books/sampchap/4677.aspx

dmlorenzetti
Check out "Physics for Future Presidents" by Richard Muller. It gives an overview of physics, emphasizing why the concepts are important in the modern world, rather than the math details.

If she's interested in biology, you might consider "Animals in Translation" by Temple Grandin. It's more about animals than about technology, but it touches on how understanding animals affects the low-tech systems that you use to handle them.

For interesting/easy intros to why some math skills are important, look at Darrell Huff's "How to Lie With Statistics" or John Allen Paulos' "Innumeracy" (or "A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper").

I haven't read any of them, but I hear Petroski's books recommended.

For a great short read that touches on architectural engineering, law, and ethics, look for Joe Morgenstern's "Fifty-Nine Story Crisis" which appeared in the New Yorker in May 1995. It's about how the structural engineer for the Citicorp tower realized its design was flawed, after the tower had been built and occupied. You can find it on the web.

Some of these are not overtly about "learn this technology", but to me they all sell the idea of technology and science as both central to our lives and interesting.

lovemath
Physics for Future Presidents is a great book - my wife gave her a copy last spring. I don't know if my daughter finished it but I know she said she found it interesting.

We have the the math books you mentioned but I haven't heard about the others before. Animals in Translation and Fifty-Nine Story Crisis look really good. Thanks for the reference!

brudgers
Why push something that your daughter isn't interested in? Technology is your interest, not hers. Get her some books by Dawkins. Turn her on to Earnst Mayer. Check some Stephen J. Gould out of the public library for her. Take her to Manhatten to see the Guggenheim and the Frick and MOMA and the Metropolitan. Let her become the healthy person she wants to be. Let her own her life.
lovemath
She's read some of Dawkins and Gould and as parents we try our best to support all her interests but there's still a dearth of engaging books covering technical subjects at an intermediate level.

Bookstores these days only seem to have illustrated books for younger children and software books for "dummies".

Snail_Commando
There are already suggestions in this thread that are better than mine, but I'll still throw my hat in the ring.

That's great that she's interested in biology. I'd like to gently suggest that if she "isn't very enthusiastic about computers or technology", you should instead try to nurture her demonstrated interest in art, biology, and other science.

I know absolutely nothing about art, except that I apparently have no taste. So I'll refrain from making any suggestions on art books.

TL;DR: Skip down to the third section for the "technical book" suggestion.

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(1)

Here are some suggestions of books on general science, biology, and chemistry (in no particular order, these are some of the first ones that come to my mind):

"The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" By Thomas S. Kuhn

"The Diversity of Life" By Edward O. Wilson

"The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time" by Jonathan Weiner

"Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History" by Stephen Jay Gould

"Life on a Young Planet" By Andrew H. Knoll

"Galápagos" By Kurt Vonnegut (Fiction, but related) (I loved this book, but it's not for everyone I suppose. A couple of my friends didn't like it.)

"Napoleon's Buttons" By Penny Le Couteur and Jay Burreson

"The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher" By Lewis Thomas

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(2)

If she's interested in learning a lot about cellular biology in beautifully exhaustive detail, buy her this textbook:

"Molecular Biology of the Cell" By Bruce Alberts, Paul Walter, Alexander Johnson, Julian Lewis, Martin Raff, Keith Roberts

This book is huge. And it is wonderful.

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---Read this suggestion if my other suggestions aren't good---

(3)

So you want a technical book? And she's interested in biology?

Buy her a copy of:

"The Principles of Biomedical Informatics" By Ira J. Kalet

This textbook is incredible. It teaches you some fundamentals of many different flavors of bioinformatics. (Different flavors, because, as the author acknowledges, bioinformatics can mean many things.) You can learn how to work with amino acid sequences, protein modeling, medical imaging, probabilistic biomedical models, and more!

Since you have SICP and LoL on your bookshelf already, you might love the next part. The entire textbook is a cleverly accessible primer on how to build applications with Common Lisp. Whether you're a greybeard Lisp hacker or a repl-noob, you'll like this book if you are interested in learning about bioinformatics.

I've had the first edition for quite some time. Recently, I think in the past few months, a second edition was released. Someone gifted me the 2nd ed, :) but I haven't really compared the two.

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I was going to suggest Gödel, Escher, Bach when you mentioned she was interested in art, and were hoping to find a technical book for her. Then I saw that you already had tried that one. I'm going to leave the suggestion anyway because these types of threads are wonderful for finding great books.