I am asking for 2-3 books in your area of study that you would recommend which you find invaluable. They can be broadly about your field or specific to certain aspects of your field, but are well written, well researched, and reward study and revisiting. I am most curious about the "desert island" aspect, i.e. these are the 2-3 books that you would put on a pedestal (and it would be great to hear the reasons for this, if you care to share).
This is my first post in this sub, so I apologize for any eye-rolling this question may induce! It was inspired by a political science professor who once told me that every professor who had been teaching long enough had 2 or 3 books that they held in higher esteem than all others.
Do you know we maintain a book list? Because we maintain a book list. The link is somewhere to the right. It's constantly being revised. Dollars to donuts its the most up to date list anywhere.
I work mainly with water law and policy, so this might be a bit esoteric, but Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner is hands down the best single resource for the history of water and development in the western United States. Details a range of topics from the original California Water Wars to the feud between the Bureau of Reclamation and the Corps of Engineers. A bit on the "pop-history" side, which makes it accessible, but it's thoroughly researched.
The Ottoman Centuries: The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire by Lord Kinross It's entertaining to read and is a good introduction on the subject
The history of Psych-ology-iatry is fairly difficult to give a "desert island book" for as it's reasonably niche but I'd say; Ernest Jones's 1953-57 work The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud which was one of the first biographies of Jones's colleague & of the psychoanalytic movement.
After Jones's three-part work, I'd suggest Peter Gay's 1988 Freud: A Life For Our Time & for a more general view, George Makari's 2008 Revolution in Mind: The Creation of Psychoanalysis
Obviously being a history subreddit those books are going to focus on the start of Psychology (and thus have a very Freudian basis) but if you wanted something a little more scientific you could check out Oliver Sacks's 1986 The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Richard Gross's 2005 Psychology: The Science of Mind and Behaviour 5th Ed.
Also check out Neel Burton's 2016 Psychiatry, third edition, Semple. D & Smyth. R's 2013 Oxford Handbook of Psychiatry & Katona. C et al's 2015 Psychiatry at a Glance, 6th Ed.
For dessert island reading, I'd want to it to be light (perhaps I am being too literal) and easy to tote around. So while it is an amazing combination of synthesizing old information and new research, Alan Williams' The Knight and the Blast Furnace is out. On the other hand, Claude Blair's nearly 60 year old European Armour Circa 1066 to 1700 is slim, and describes most of what you would want to know about the physical form of German and Italian plate armour.
