[rg111]

ISL is a legit good book. Has the correct amount and balance or rigor and application.

The explanation, examples, projects, math- all are crisp.

As the name suggests, it is only an introduction (unlike CLRS). And it does serve as a great beginners' book giving you proper foundation for the things that you learn and apply in the future.

One thing people complain about is it being written in R, but no serious hacker should fear R, as it can be picked up in 30 minutes, and you can implement the ideas in Python.

As someone with industry experience in Deep Learning, I will recommend this book.

The ML course by Andrew Ng has no parallel, though. One must try and do that course. Not sure about the current iteration, but the classic one (w/ Octabe/MATLAB) was really great.