Ask HN: Any good books on graphing/charting/visualization?

I can't second your suggestion enough.

the first one as you say is the essential one

Agreed, its absolutely excellent.

Tufte is great, but he's extremely heavy and a bit dated.

his first book (The Visual Display of Quantitative Information) is the most relevant

Edward Tufte's book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information is a monumental book.

start out with Tufte if you are new to the field

I've read The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Tufte, and I think it would benefit you

The best practical book that I've found is The Wall Street Journal Guide to Information Graphics: The Dos and Don'ts of Presenting Data, Facts, and Figures.

I've found the WSJ Guide to Information Graphics by Dona Wong to be pretty decent and pretty straight forward

Visualizing Data is a good choice

I would check out Visualizing Data

there's "Beginning Python Visualization" by Vaingast. It's pretty introductory, but provides good starting points.

Also, look at Ben Fry's Processing books

I find the book very easy to follow

A colleague says great things about Cleveland's "The Elements of Graphing Data."

thrilling read (he's giving away four of his books to every attendee)

The UseR series books are very good too