Alright, these are my absolute favorites:
A Brief History of Time by
Stephen Hawking - Theoretical Physics explained in a way that a lay person can understand and this, from the foremost genius in the field. Mind-bending, though-provoking, really quite astonishing.
The C Programming Language by
Brian W. Kernighan, Dennis M. Ritchie AKA K&R -
Ritchie is the creator of the language (
C[Wikipedia.org] was used to write almost all modern Operating Systems; Windows, Linux, MAC etc.) This is the first computer language I learned and had the book for ages and read it countless number of times. Now I don't even need a PC in front of me to enjoy it. I could read it like a novel.
Hackers: Heroes of The Computer Revolution by Steven Levy - Biography of sorts of
Bill Gates (MS),
Steve Jobs,
Steve Wozniack (Apple Computer),
Richard M. Stallman aka RMS (creator of Free Software Foundation;
FSF[Wikipedia.org]) etc. etc. Also a very inspiring romp through the heydays of MIT (Massachussetts Institute of Technology) and its AI department.
Just for Fun by
Linus Torvalds,
David Diamond - Biography of
Linus Torwalds, creator of the
Linux[Wikipedia.org] Operating System.
Linus along with
Richard Stallman were my idles growing up and my major inspiration to become a programmer.
Mathematics: From the Birth of Numbers by
Jan Gullberg - My favourite math book,
Gullberg is a medical doctor though he was fascinated enough by the subject that he spent ten years of his life to compiling this 1100 page tome. Every conceivable topic on the subject is in here, from simple concepts such as Numbers up to Calculus (Differential Equations)! and everything in-between.
Cheers, DeepThought
