What Are Some Notable Baby Books Across Different Fields?

[vanhees71]

Why? In what sense?

It was meant as a joke. If you know enough mathematicians you know what I mean, but maybe it's even some deeper truth in it, because you have to be open to just play around with ideas and puzzles. It's precisely what's killed when thinking math were like it is presented by Bourbaki. Bourbaki presents the final state of a mathematical subject but doesn't tell you anything about how you get there. In this sense it's like a very good encyclopedia to look up mathematical facts but a lousy textbook, because it's not telling you how in fact to do math.

 

[Mr.Husky]

Mercel berger wrote a book on classical geometry and another on Riemannian geometry. Does this qualify your criteria Demystifier?
Classical:-https://books.google.co.in/books/ab...ton&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=1&redir_esc=y
Riemannian:-https://books.google.co.in/books/ab...ton&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=1&redir_esc=y
I am now studying classical one and I have to say that Mercel Berger is a brilliant author. This book gives ideas and some puzzles which @vanhees71 mentioned.

 

[sysprog]

It was meant as a joke. If you know enough mathematicians you know what I mean, but maybe it's even some deeper truth in it, because you have to be open to just play around with ideas and puzzles. It's precisely what's killed when thinking math were like it is presented by Bourbaki. Bourbaki presents the final state of a mathematical subject but doesn't tell you anything about how you get there. In this sense it's like a very good encyclopedia to look up mathematical facts but a lousy textbook, because it's not telling you how in fact to do math.

Nicolas Bourbaki is a pseudonym that is referential to a group of math guys, including Henri Cartan and André Weil $-$ it's math written by commitee, wherefore it's not as apt to show the individual journey by which the author arrived at a conclusion $-$ please imagine what might have happened to Newton's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_Fluxionshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_Fluxions if he had closely collaborated with Leibniz on single variable calculus . . .

 

[vanhees71]

Sure. I don't critizize the great work by the Bourbaki group but I don't recommend to take these books (and similar textbooks written in this style) as textbooks.

I guess Newton and Leibniz wouldn't have been able to write a coauthored book at all. I'd rather guess one would have rather murdered the other. I'm not sure, whether the two arch enemies ever met in person ;-)).