Used in over 1000 universities in 91 countries, Artificial Intelligence, A Modern Approach is one of the most popular textbooks on Artificial Intelligence. If you’re interested in diving head-first into AI studies, and want a comprehensive overview of the field’s history, common problems and solutions, I recommend this book. It’s also a great reference book for anyone that’s working on AI (No I’m not getting paid for this, unfortunately). See the AIMA table of contents here.

But what better way to get a sense of whether this book is for you, than to briefly flip through the index? The first pages immediately give a feel for how many things use, or are related to AI technologies, and how comprehensive the book really is. On the second page of the index, you’ll see that on page 462 there’s information on “airport, driving to” — an indispensable part of every major AI research project. Of course, you’ll be taking the shortest path there (p.91), but just in case you get bored during the cab ride you can always solve the sliding-block puzzle for recreation (p.66). In case your cab driver suffers a heart-attack, don’t panic — see taxi-driving on pages 53 and 971.

If you’re heading somewhere the airlines don’t offer flights to, or just want to go where no man has gone before — don’t worry — page 455 has you covered with spacecraft assembly. Please note that if you intend to use nuclear power (p. 533) in your spacecraft, you have to make sure there’s room for every animal on Earth … just in case you cause a worst possible catastrophy (p. 593). It’s of utmost importance that you don’t forget the monkey and bananas (p. 90, 412).

If you’re a bachelor (p. 324), the book has some intriguing activities for you, including beer-factory scheduling (p. 458) and of course hill-climbing (p. 112, 222). Don’t forget to bring the book with you when you go hill-climbing: in case you get lost it could save your life to have information on lizard toasting (p. 688) — in case it doesn’t, see life insurance on page 592. If you’re more of a stay-at-home person, there’s nothing better than to spend your sundays doing asbestos removal (p. 593).

If you’re wondering about the supernatural or spiritual, see existence of god (p. 487) — or on similar notes, see Batman (p. 458). Unfortunately the book covers so many things that intelligence is only briefly touched on (p. 1, 32). Finally, to get a feel for the general writing style of the book, here’s an excerpt from page 104:

[Simplified Memory-bounded A* algorithm] regenerates the subtree only when all other paths have been shown to look worse than the path it has forgotten. [...] The complete algorithm is too complicated to reproduce here.

By now you should be satisfiably knowledgeable on the coverage and depth of Artificial Intelligence, A Modern Approach, or alternatively, you have suffered what we scientists refer to as optimal brain-damage (p. 748). In either case, you should be aware that AIMA is great (honestly, the book really is worth owning).

Be an advice taker (p. 19, 23) and go purchase the book on Amazon.