What are some alternatives to the book "Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach"? There are two textbooks that I most love and am most afraid of in the world: Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen et al. and Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach by Norvig et al. I have started the "AI: A Modern Approach" more than once, but the book is so dense and full of theory that I get discouraged after a couple of weeks and stop.

I am looking for a similar AI book but with an equal emphasis on theory and practice. Some examples of what I am looking for:


The Elements of Statistical Learning by Tibshirani et al. (detailed theory)
An Introduction to Statistical Learning: With Applications in R by
Tibshirani et al. (theory+practical)
Digital Image Processing by Gonzalez et al. (detailed theory)
Digital Image Processing Using MATLAB by Gonzalez et al.
(theory+practical)
The following 2 books helped me understand the basics and guided me through my first AI / CI implementations.

Computational Intelligence: An Introduction by Andries P. Engelbrecht
It includes the most relevant developments in computational intelligence with good discussions on intelligence and artificial intelligence (AI).

Computational Intelligence: Concepts to Implementation by Russell C. Eberhart and Yuhui Shi
It is a comprehensive textbook, supported with lots of practical examples.