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The Best Textbooks on Every Subject is the Schelling point for the best textbooks on every subject. My The Best Tacit Knowledge Videos on Every Subject is the Schelling point for the best tacit knowledge videos on every subject. This post is the Schelling point for the best reference works for every subject.

Reference works provide an overview of a subject. Types of reference works include charts, maps, encyclopedias, glossaries, wikis, classification systems, taxonomies, syllabi, and bibliographies.

Reference works are valuable for orienting oneself to fields, particularly when beginning. They can help identify unknown unknowns; they help get a sense of the bigger picture; they are also very interesting and fun to explore.

How to Submit

My previous The Best Tacit Knowledge Videos on Every Subject uses author credentials to assess the epistemics of submissions. The Best Textbooks on Every Subject requires submissions to be from someone who has read at least three textbooks in the textbook domain.

It is more difficult to assess the epistemics of reference works than tacit knowledge videos and textbooks due to the breadth of the category “reference work”. That being the case, reference works are selected and included based on my judgment. The key question I intend to answer in selecting reference works is: “Does this reference work feel useful and interesting for giving me orientation in a domain?”

If you know of any reference works, I warmly invite you to submit them in the LessWrong comments with the following structure:

Domain: Philosophy

Link: History of Philosophy - Summarized & Visualized

Author(s): Deniz Cem Önduygu, Hüseyin Kuşçu, and Eser Aygün

Type: Interactive Chart

Why: Cool, comprehensive, interactive chart that shows the history of philosophy along a diagonal line. 

The List

Humanities

History

• Histography  by Matan Stauber [interactive timeline] — Wikipedia‑driven interface plotting 14 billion years of events; scale toggles from decades to geological eras and updates daily.
• Timeline of World History Poster  by UsefulCharts [chart] — wall chart aligning all major civilizations 3300 BCE – present with consciously reduced Euro‑centric bias.
• Timeline of US History Poster  by UsefulCharts [chart] — 2025 update spans colonial era to today; features two overview maps plus photos of all 47 presidents, color‑coded by party.
• Technology over the long run  by Max Roser [chart] — Interactive spiral and linear timelines tracing 3.4 million years of technological milestones to illustrate accelerating change.
• HyperHistory Online  by Andreas Nothiger [interactive timeline] — “Synchronoptic” lifelines, timelines, and maps condensing 3,000 years of world history into a single navigable view.
• Adams Synchronological Chart (Map of History)  [chart] — 23‑ft illustrated timeline spanning 4004 BC → 1881 AD; America’s 19th‑c. “grand synthesis.”

Religion

• World Religions Family Tree Poster  by UsefulCharts [chart] — 4,000 years of Buddhist, Hindu, Chinese, Jewish, Christian, Islamic, and other lineages on a single branching timeline. 

Philosophy

Literature

• Great English Literature  by Henry Oliver [syllabus] — Canon‑focused roadmap from Homer to Hilary Mantel, outlining genre taxonomy, foundational works, and anthologies.

Formal Sciences

Computer Science

Mathematics

• The Princeton Companion to Mathematics  by Timothy Gowers (ed.) [reference book] — 1034‑page 2008 encyclopedia of modern mathematics: 133 expert contributors survey key concepts, research fields, famous problems, history, and applications; winner of the 2011 Euler Book Prize.
• Timeline of Mathematics  by Mathigon (Philipp Legner) [interactive timeline] — Zoomable scroll tracing 20,000 BCE to present with 200 + mathematicians, discoveries, and artefacts, each linked to bite‑size bios and context.

Natural Sciences

Physics

• Landmark Numbers  by Miles Kodama [list] — Order‑of‑magnitude figures (Earth radius, US population, etc.) for mental estimation. 

Earth Science

• Water Librarians’ Home Page  by Robert Teeter [directory] — Since 1996, a curated link hub for water‑science librarians: agencies, utilities, catalogs, publishers, associations.

Astronomy

• Johnston’s Archive  by Wm. Robert Johnston [directory] — Independent trove on astronomy, nukes, terrorism, casualty stats, and more.

Professional and Applied Sciences

Library and Information Sciences

Education

Research

• Connected Papers [interactive chart] — Tool that helps navigate paper references using a tree of nodes.
• Gap Map  by Convergent Research [interactive map] — Visual catalogue of “fundamental‑development” R&D gaps, needed capabilities and resources.
• SpringerLink Journals A‑Z  [journal index] — Alphabetical browser for 10M+ Springer Nature articles and 3,000 titles.

Finance

• Economic Sectors by TradingView [classification system] — Clickable of all economic sectors and industries in the U.S.
• Stock Heatmap by TradingView [interactive chart] — Heatmap of public company stocks sorted by industry.

Medicine and Health

• Drugs@FDA Databases  [database] — Official queries for Drug Approvals, Orange Book, NDC codes, guides, and post‑marketing data.
• Improving Clinical Trial Design  by Saloni Dattani [syllabus] — Crash‑course  + deep‑dive readings on RCT history, regulation, platform/adaptive designs, and statistical power for faster, cheaper drug discovery.

Meditation

Urban Planning

• Cities  by Devon Zuegel [syllabus] — Urbanism primer spanning agglomeration economics, planning ideologies, and new‑city experiments, with walking‑tour heuristics and essential texts.
• Housing Supply  by Sam Bowman, Ben Southwood, and John Myers [syllabus] — Evidence‑packed guide to YIMBY economics: supply‑demand fundamentals, “housing theory of everything,” NIMBY politics, and global case studies. 

Forecasting

• Map of the Prediction Market & Forecasting Ecosystem by Saul Munn [directory] — Reasonably comprehensive mapping of the prediction market/forecasting ecosystem, including prediction markets, forecasting platforms, research/consultancy firms, tools, resources for learning, community infrastructure, and media/news/journalism.

Social Sciences

Economics

• EconGraphs [glossary] — A bunch of economics graphs like supply and demand, production possibilities frontier, etc.

Political Science

By Medium

Other Lists like This

Further Reading

Thanks to Saul Munn and Collisteru for conversations that inspired this post. Thanks to Skyler Crossman and nomagicpill for helpful feedback on this post. Thanks to ChatGPT o3 for helping me generate descriptions for some of these links and Claude for helping me rewrite some sentences.

Also, this post and The Best Tacit Knowledge Videos on Every Subject take time to maintain. If you’d like to help, drop me a line! I'll pay you $2/entry-added.