Ask HN: book recommendation for data visualization for beginners?

Check out Visualizing Data by Ben Fry http://benfry.com/, one of the authors of the Processing language. The book is based on his doctoral dissertation, and has a technical (as opposed to artistic or design) focus, but is easy to understand. The Processing language/environment is Java based.

I think Cleveland was the first person to write about DV. Anyway, this book has been recommended to me several times

http://www.amazon.com/Visualizing-Data-William-S-Cleveland/d...

Maybe not for beginners but what Ive been told is the holy grail for data viz is: http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi