recommend a book/resource for learning about.....

[turnipmonster]

often times there is a topic that I have an interest in, and I want to get a broad overview of it before deciding if I'm really interested in exploring it further.

I'd like to have a thread where people can post a topic they are interested in learning more about, and someone who has some knoweledge of that topic can recommend 1 or 2 quality resources for learning.

the idea here is to keep the recommendations very simple, and not to have responses containing long lists where 10 different books get recommended and the original poster has no idea what to read first. in the interest of brevity, let's try and keep discussion focused on the resources recommended, rather than the topics themselves.

to kick off the thread, if anyone is curious about indian cooking, two resources I really like are:

1) the wikipedia entry on indian cuisine is a really great overview of the different styles of cooking, which vary a lot by region. I've read a lot of wikipedia articles and this series stands out to me.

2)classic indian cooking, by julie sahni is the best overview I've read of indian cooking. there are plenty of recipes, but the entire first section of the book is dedicated to a discussion of the ingredients and techniques used in indian cooking, and their function in a dish. by learning how different spices interact, you can understand the spice's function in a dish and often make a substitution in case you're running low on mango powder.

some topics I'd love to hear recommendations for are

1) economics
2) chess
3) the great depression

ok, either recommend or post something you'd like to learn about!