Books

Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi.

Terran Republic series by Charles Gannon has humans more advanced than one or two, but definitely not at the top of the pack.

Sector General by James White has humans as part of the large alliance of races. The alliance is more advanced than some of the races they encounter.

Foreigner series by C J Cherryh has humans far more technologically advanced, however the small number that reach the alien world have to learn to live peacefully with the aliens.

Most of the Stars wars books have humans as very advanced.

https://old.reddit.com/r/hfy

Yeah, sorry for promoting reddit here, but this subreddit is exactly what you are looking for. And I mean exactly. It is a collection of stories about humans being awesome, usually in a fantasy or sci-fi setting.

If you do not have a life I can recommend The Deathworlders, which was started there and is also available as an ebook on https://deathworlders.com/ . A personal favorite of mine is "Amelia's Last Battle" and "Humanities Debt", which are two short stories and do not take a year of dedicated reading to complete. I have also read "Bought and Sold", "sexy space babes" (contains nsfw), "Chrysalis", and more.

I can also recommend going through their wiki, which has a list of all completed stories. This is probably the best page to start: https://old.reddit.com/r/HFY/wiki/ref/must_read

The only caveat is that people there are amateur writers. Some stories are never completed and the quality differs between "well, at least they're learning how to write" to godlike (e.g. the Deathworlders)

Edit: I see plenty of people already recommended the subreddit XD
I hope mentioning some of the stories I enjoyed does add value here.

I saw you mentioning that you want professional books. I can understand that the format (reddit posts) is not suited for offline reading or printing. This can be very annoying, I agree. But in terms of quality: there are some really good writers there. Buying the book in a physical store or on the internet doesn't change the words that are written.

Little Fuzzy books by H. Beam Piper.

1st one is public domain:

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/18137

I know it's not exactly what you asked but "To sleep in a sea of stars" by Christopher Paolini has humans at almost comparable with the aliens they interact with. Humans are slightly outclassed by the aliens in ship speed but the rest of the technology seems roughly comparable, with humans having better missile tech. It feels more like humans will lose a war of attrition if something major isn't done, not being completely outclassed.

I just enjoyed the book so much I'm recommending it regardless of the tech differences not quite aligning to the question.

Academy series, by Jack McDevitt. Although there are more advanced species mentioned, they've all died off.

Alex Benedict series, by Jack McDevitt again. There's only two species of intelligences in this series, and they're of roughly equal status.

Hmm, that's an interesting perspective I never heard about. Bump.

If you like things that are on the less serious side, the Humans Are Weird series by Betty Adams is hilarious, adorable, lighthearted, and fun. Usually written from the perspective of the various aliens, and she does a damn good job of it too. Been reading I Have the Data with friends, and it's been a grand time

The galaxies edge series is not bad. Lots of military porn though if that's not your thing.

It's kind of star wars ish with the alien races all living together with humans, but humans overall are the ruling force.

A few that I can recommend are:

• Angel Station by Walter Jon Williams
• Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward
• Blindsight by Peter Watts
• Schild's Ladder by Greg Egan