The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 2nd edition
Not entirely a GIS Book but very helpful in many map design problems
Geospatial Analysis: A Comprehensive Guide to Principles, Techniques and Software Tools
Entire text is online: http://www.spatialanalysisonline.com/
A solid guide to how geospatial analysis work, particularly with respect to GIS. The book emphasizes conceptual workflows, but still provides the basic math. I found the math quite helpful for creating my own code and also getting an understanding of what's happening under the hood in contemporary GIS.
Here's my "recent" favourites, both cartography-related:
Designing Better Maps: A Guide for GIS Users
by Cynthia A. Brewer.
Making Maps: A Visual Guide to Map Design for GIS
by Krygier and Wood.
The basic principles and practices of GIS haven't changed more than incrementally in the last half-decade, and the cool new technologies--commercial mapping APIs, KML, REST, location-based games and services, etc--have all been advancing at a frenetic pace since 2005 (note the publication date of the two books above)
If new technology matters to you (and it should) and you think you can rely on books, you may as well give up and go home. To survive in this environment, you need to be adept with blogs and online documentation, and be willing to experiment.
Burrough and McDonnell's Principles of Geographic Information Systems
is also a good one. It provides you with most of the basic and higher level GIS concepts. It is software agnostic which means you can very much apply the principles in any tool you use.
Cartographic Relief Presentation
by Eduard Imhof is the single best book I've read on cartography to date. Before ESRI Press republished the book in 2007 the only way to get was through inter-library loan via the University networks, and wait a number of months. It's still worth reading the original 1965 (Swiss/German) or 1982 (English) edition if you can as the reprint moves all the colour plates to the back of the book, and there is (an unavoidable) shift in colours and line detail. Cartographic Relief Presentation is more than forty years old, and still relevant. There's even an arcgis tool and photoshop method modelled after his Swiss Style Shaded Relief.
Designing Better Maps: A Guide for GIS Users
by Cynthia A. Brewer.Making Maps: A Visual Guide to Map Design for GIS
by Krygier and Wood.The basic principles and practices of GIS haven't changed more than incrementally in the last half-decade, and the cool new technologies--commercial mapping APIs, KML, REST, location-based games and services, etc--have all been advancing at a frenetic pace since 2005 (note the publication date of the two books above)
If new technology matters to you (and it should) and you think you can rely on books, you may as well give up and go home. To survive in this environment, you need to be adept with blogs and online documentation, and be willing to experiment.
Burrough and McDonnell's Principles of Geographic Information Systems
is also a good one. It provides you with most of the basic and higher level GIS concepts. It is software agnostic which means you can very much apply the principles in any tool you use. Cartographic Relief Presentation
by Eduard Imhof is the single best book I've read on cartography to date. Before ESRI Press republished the book in 2007 the only way to get was through inter-library loan via the University networks, and wait a number of months. It's still worth reading the original 1965 (Swiss/German) or 1982 (English) edition if you can as the reprint moves all the colour plates to the back of the book, and there is (an unavoidable) shift in colours and line detail. Cartographic Relief Presentation is more than forty years old, and still relevant. There's even an arcgis tool and photoshop method modelled after his Swiss Style Shaded Relief.