The three favourite soil science books of:

Thorsten Behrens (Germany)

Recommending soil science books is a non-trivial task and is depending on the audience. Many important, interesting and beautiful books are already recommended ranging from groundbreaking ones such as Jenny's book on soil forming factors, books focussing on specific techniques like Webster and Oliver's Statistical methods in soil and land resource survey , to general soil science text books such as the Handbook of Soil Science . We can no longer ask Hans van Baren of ISRIC who reviewed 598 soil science books between 1999 and 2007.

Three of my favourite books I would recommend to students interested in modern (spatial) soil science research such as pedometrics, soil geography, digital soil mapping, pedology and soil sensing are:

Guidelines for Surveying Soil and Land Resources
by McKenzie, Grundy, Webster and Ringrose-Voase (2008, CSIRO Publishing).

Soil Geomorphology - an Integration of Pedology and Geomorphology
by Gerrard (1992, Chapman & Hall)

Principals of Geographical Information Systems
by Burrough and McDonnell (1998, Oxford University Press)

Guidelines for Surveying Soil and Land Resources is an amazing collection of knowledge promoting important and modern methods and standards for soil surveys. Even though it is focussing on soil and land resource surveys in Australia most concepts are rather universal. Soil Geomorphology - an Integration of Pedology and Geomorphology provides a detailed discussion of soil formation in relation to relief, which, to my point of view, is of great importance for understanding and mapping soils in space. Principals of Geographical Information Systems is one of the best books currently available on the topic of GIS. It presents a strong theoretical basis and thus provides one of the most important prerequisites needed for pedometrical research.