THE BEST Books

Did you know that killer whales have been known to eat deer, or that fluffy white clouds can weigh a million pounds? Author Shane Carley’s offbeat trivia book is filled with 500 strange things that sound like they were totally made up, but are factually correct.

Written by retired Navy SEAL Clint Emerson, this book is packed with illustrated tips and solutions for taking control in dangerous situations, including self defense, escape, and evasion techniques. The tips include low-tech/no-tech methods to help you improvise when things go South. Be sure to check out the Survival Edition as well.

Expand your programming knowledge with an outstanding bundle of eBooks from renowned tech publisher O’Reilly. Pay what you want, but 15 bucks or more gets you all 15 titles, covering SQL, PHP, R, C#, Java, TypeScript, Python, Scala, Rust, and more.

Stuck at home with the kids? Author Mike Rampton comes to the rescue with a compilation of more than 500 family friendly games and diversions to keep the boredom to a minimum. Each activity is ranked by energy level and can be played with stuff lying around the house.

Photographer Mark Richards and author John Alderman offer a visual guide to some of the earliest examples of computing devices. The 176-page hardcover book features artistically-composed images of machines like the Eniac, Cray 1, and the original Apple 1, which call Silicon Valley’s Computer History Museum home.

This collection of four books from wilderness expert and author Dave Canterbury includes everything you ever wanted to know about thriving in the wild. The combined reference guides include over 1000 pages of techniques for building shelters, trapping, gathering, and cooking, along with first aid and survival.

When it’s hot and sunny out, you should be drinking some appropriately sunshiney drinks. Davis Adams’ cocktail book is packed with delicious combinations of rum, fruit juice, and other staples of the tiki scene. And if you’re looking for some glasses to serve your conconctions, we highly recommend Geeki Tikis.

Packed with over 400 pages of artwork and historical artifacts from the Transformers franchise, author Jim Sorenson’s coffee table compendium is sure to delight any Transformers fan. The deluxe edition includes a collector’s box and five ready-to-frame prints.

Looking for a real challenge? Look no further than illustrator Tim Jeffs‘ coloring books, each of which includes highly-detailed greyscale animal images, with lots of tight spaces for you to embellish. Each book has 25 images, printed on high quality paper and a lay-flat binding. Jeffs also offers coloring lessons in his Etsy shop.

Learn everything there is to know about coffee in this 256 page reference guide by champion barista Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood. The book features illustrations and information about numerous types of coffee, terminology, along with details on growing, roasting, brewing, and the finer points of coffee tasting.

While Google is our go-to for many answers, we still keep a copy of Thomas Glover’s Pocket Ref on hand. It’s loaded with more than 850 pages of reference tables, formulas, constants, and conversions, and is one book we’d want in our bug-out bag if the internet ever blew up. The larger Desk Ref has 1280 pages.

Were the raptors in Jurassic Park just misunderstood? Who’s the better tough guy movie dog owner? Shea Serrano’s book explores these and other random questions from the world of movies. Arturo Torres‘ witty and sharply-drawn images are the perfect accompaniment to Serrano’s in-depth analysis.

This Humble Bundle is packed with over $1000 worth of reading material from Morgan & Claypool to help you learn about electronic circuits, microcontrollers, and engineering principles. Pay what you want, and if you spend more than $15, you’ll get all 17 e-Books, while supporting the National Coalition Against Censorship.

Are you feeling stressed out? Perhaps you could use a little light reading material to help ease your tension. This parody kid’s book is filled with sensory pleasures like the fur on a soft puppy dog, a cozy warm blanket… and swearing like a truck driver.

Ready to challenge your brain? Created by Google Software Engineering Manager and puzzle fanatic Willa Chen, this book is filled with 135 of the toughest puzzles money can buy. There’s a good variety too, from cryptograms to word searches to Sudoku, crosswords, and more.

Sunlife Drawing’s unique coloring books offer a different kind of relaxation for your mind. Rather than traditional illustrations to color in, each page is filled with black and white lineart which result in halftones line and dot patterns when filled in.

Jessica Ambats is passionate about both photography and aviation, and she’s quite the talent behind the lens. Her 160-page book features some of the spectacular images she’s captured over the past 15 years, with a unique focus on pilots who own and fly their own jets. Available as a digital download or hardcover.

From the creators of the YouTube cooking series of the same name, comes a cookbook filled with more than 60 tasty and easy-to-prepare recipes that will make you feel like you actually know a thing or two about cooking, and might actually impress your family and friends.

Between 1888 and 1913, Romeyn Beck Hough collected specimens of wood to create what would become the de facto standard for studying trees and wood. Taschen got their hands on a pristine copy of the 14 volume set, and photographed each sample for this 768 page book. A fantastic gift for any artist or woodworker.

Looking for another relaxing activity to pass some time at home? This book is filled with dot-to-dot illustrations of famous locations around the globe. Like the other books in in Thomas Pavitte’s dot-to-dot series, each image is made from exactly 1,000 dots, and comes printed on a tear-out page, suitable for framing.

In his latest book, author Cody Cassidy (And Then You’re Dead) offers up the origin stories of everyday stuff. From the first time anyone ever used soap, to the first time someone drank beer, it’s packed with fascinating stories about ubiquitous things, told in a fun and illuminating way.

Before Snoop Dogg cooked on Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party, nobody would have guessed the perennially-baked Doggfather could, well, bake. According to this book, he’s a crook-turned-cook with his recipes for 50 munchie-satisfying foods like baked mac & cheese, fried bologna sandwiches, and chicken ‘n’ waffles.

Motion artist Henning M. Lederer is back with another cool animated clip. This time, he didn’t just use book covers, but he included some eye-catching designs from vintage record sleeves as well. The electronic music track by Tilman Grundig fits the structured, geometric imagery perfectly.

Artist Andrew DeGraff’s cinematic atlas is filled with intricate isometric maps which guide us through the locations in popular movies. The hardcover book features 11″ x 14″ reproductions of his hand-painted maps from 35 movies including King Kong, Fargo, The Princess Bride, The Shining, and many more.

Humble teamed up with publisher Morgan & Claypool for this bundle of e-books which dive deep into the science, math, and technology of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Pay what you want, and the more you spend, the more e-books you get. A portion of every purchase goes to the Book Industry Charitable Foundation.

Ten Speed Press presents a fantastic collection of artwork and history from the Dungeons & Dragons franchise. The hardcover book includes over 700 pieces of art from the game’s core books, supplements, modules, concepts, and merch. A deluxe special edition includes posters and other bonuses.