# Start Doing Graph Theory by Sam Burns

7 Hacker News commenters recommended Start Doing Graph Theory by Sam Burns and 1 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 1 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People praise its readable, human-sounding prose and its clean website, and say it works as an introduction to graph theory for high school students. The main caveat is that it has no solutions to its practice problems.

## Why people recommend it

- Readable, human-sounding prose (4 comments): "I'd be surprised to see current LLMs write as well (and as non-annoying) as the writing in this book." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50273960)) "Reading through the first chapter, I got the feeling that it is more human than a lot of the books" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50274415)) "It gives me confidence that it's written by a human" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50273921))

## What people warn about

- No solutions to practice problems (1 comments): "It's unfortunate that the book doesn't have solutions for practice problems." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50271480))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Algorithms for Optimization by Kochenderfer and Wheeler](https://hackerapproved.com/p/algorithms-for-optimization.md): 10 recommend
- [Mathematics for Computer Science by Lehman, Leighton and Meyer](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mathematics-for-computer-science.md): 8 recommend
- [Numerical Recipes by Press et al.](https://hackerapproved.com/p/numerical-recipes.md): 7 recommend
- [Concrete Mathematics by Graham, Knuth and Patashnik](https://hackerapproved.com/p/concrete-mathematics.md): 7 recommend
- [Visual Complex Analysis by Tristan Needham](https://hackerapproved.com/p/visual-complex-analysis.md): 5 recommend

## Where to get it

- [See price on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Start+Doing+Graph+Theory&tag=hackerapprove-20) (affiliate link)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Start Doing Graph Theory by Sam Burns", https://hackerapproved.com/p/start-doing-graph-theory/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).