A rough guide to some of the R-related books we keep close to our desks at all times. Several great references to statistics in R and some favorites related to data visualization.

Statistical Methods for Environmental Epidemiology with R: This is a great book if you do time series modeling of health data. Roger and Francesca do a nice job of breaking down the concepts and providing examples.

ggplot2 Elegant Graphics for Data Analysis: There are a lot of ggplot2-related materials on the web but having the actual, physical book is useful, it’s often easier to find what you need and Hadley also does a good job discussing the background and details.

R Graphics: This is one of my favorite all-time books on R and I use it all the time. I only have the first edition but the second edition also covers ggplot2 so that would be the one to get.

Applied Spatial Data Analysis: By the experts Roger Bivand (author or rgdal), Edzer Pebesma (author of gstat) and Virgilio Gómez-Rubio! This includes an incredible amount of data on spatial analysis in R.

The Basics of S-PLUS: I don’t refer to this book much anymore but even though it’s focused on S-PLUS it is a very useful reference for R beginners since the languages are so similar and descriptions in the book are nicely done.

Modern Applied Statistics with S-PLUS: A classic and go-to book for all things stat.

Generalized Additive Models An Introduction with R: This one is dense! Luckily he has some great examples to help you work through the material.

An R and S-PLUS Companion to Applied Regression: Nice applied book with good detail on issues related, primarily, to standard regression including different contrasts, diagnostic plots etc.

Data Analysis and Graphics Using R (2nd): Excellent book touching on many different topics including regression, time series, GLM, multi-level models, tree-based classification and much more.