I was very pleasantly surprised to see Don Kagan's "Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War" in the list. His "Introduction to Ancient Greece" class is really good (and available online for free).
I'd also strongly suggest anyone interested in that topic to read Thucydides' original "History of the Peloponnesian War," which is probably the most influential history book ever written.
When I see this unsorted list that takes multiple scrolls to see it all, I feel annoyed. My need for order isn't met. Could he order by his own ranking? I can't even Find his top suggested books (unless I fiddle in View Source).
> I flagged a few books that I thought were particularly great in green and those that I thought were substantially above average in light blue.
On a related note, I find very interesting Patrick Collison’s curated bookshelf on successful industrial/applied research labs: https://patrickcollison.com/labs
I’m currently reading “Dream machines: JCR Licklider and...” and enjoying it very much.
He seems to be like me: no matter how many times I read about quantum fields and quantum mechanics, I never seem to get it, and I read a different book on the same topic.
You should read a book that presents classical mechanics in a simple way, then read both a book that presents classical fields and a book that presents classical mechanics in a complicated (modern) way, and then finally go back and read a book that is about quantum mechanics.
Although QM textbooks usually begin with a deceptively elementary introduction, it's actually there as a compressed review of many semesters of learning that was expected to have taken place beforehand. I don't think anybody has ever picked up a book on QFT and understood it without first having learned the foundations.
For me the best way is to forget the physical motivations and the historical development during first encounter, I know it is controversial but it helps you to starts calculating fast and not get boggled in philosophical stuff. Take everything "on faith" then after you know how to work with the mathematical machinery, go back and study a different book, based on the historical development and with more physical intuition.
The list of prerequisites isn't really the historical motivation, in fact is almost impossible to find the historical perspective in textbooks. It's secretly a way of teaching math and concepts to students who do not already know them. If you already know all of the necessary math you can come in "sideways" like you are describing, and it is not that controversial. Granted you will have no idea about what's going on if you don't understand Newton's laws and friends.
Plenty of books dedicate the first parts of the course to the experimental evidence of the need of a new theory, namely:the ultraviolet catastrophe of the blackbody radiation, the photoelectric effect, the unexplained stability of the electron position in an atom among others. From there you introduce, the Planck constant, the quantum of light concept, the de Broglie particle-wave duality and the Schrodinger equation and off you go. It is a pretty standard approach. As per the study of QM as a mathematical probabilistic theory you dont need Newtons Laws at all. The 5,6 postulates are pretty standard, and you take the position operator and the Hamiltonian definitions as part of them , no need to relate them to classical counterparts, at least until you prove the Ehrenfest theorem.
I understand why People of Twitter might want to read his whole library, but what do you find interesting about this personally? To me it just looks like a random list of book titles.
You can learn a lot about who a person is trying to become by the books in their library. My interest, limited though it might be, is primarily who does Patrick Collison want to become ?
> My interest, limited though it might be, is primarily who does Patrick Collison want to become ?
No offence but what does that question even mean. Can't a person wish merely to become better read, more knowledgeable, both stoke and satisfy a lifelong inquisitiveness?
The person you've described seems like they are choosing a person to become. A person who wishes to become better read and more knowledgeable wants to become a different person than a person who wants to read solely pulp mysteries.
Patrick Collison is widely regarded as a smart, thoughtful, and accomplished, and I don't think it's weird to want to know what he thinks is important to know in the future.
Patrick Collison is enormously well read and just generally an interesting thinker. That leads me to be interested in his curation of what books he thinks matter.
I'd also strongly suggest anyone interested in that topic to read Thucydides' original "History of the Peloponnesian War," which is probably the most influential history book ever written.