Also 3 more "easy overview" type books:

The New Turing Omnibus by A K Dewdney (https://www.amazon.com/New-Turing-Omnibus-Sixty-Six-Excursio...)

The Society of Mind by Marvin Minsky (https://www.amazon.com/Society-Mind-Marvin-Minsky/dp/0671657...)

Creating Mind: How the Brain Works by John E Dowling (https://www.amazon.com/Creating-Mind-How-Brain-Works/dp/0393...)

The New Turing Omnibus: Sixty-Six Excursions in Computer Science https://www.amazon.com/dp/0805071660

I would recommend "The New Turing Omnibus" book by A.K. Dewdney: http://amzn.to/2dGetic

Jeff Atwood aka CodingHorror (of Stackoverflow and Discourse fame) recommended this book strongly in this post titled "Practicing the Fundamentals: The New Turing Omnibus ": https://blog.codinghorror.com/practicing-the-fundamentals-th...

I'm a programmer without a computer science degree and I'm quite aware that CS is a bit of a blind spot for me so I've tried to read up to rectify this a little.

I found The New Turing Omnibus[1] to give a really nice overview of a bunch of topics, some chapters were a lot harder to follow than others but I got a lot from it.

Code by Charles Petzold[2] is a book I recommend to anyone who stays still long enough; it's a brilliant explanation of how computers work.

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP)[3] comes up all the time when this kind of question is asked and for good reason; it's definitely my favourite CS/programming book, and it's available for free online[4].

I'm still a long way off having the kind of education someone with a CS degree would have but those are my recommendations. I'd love to hear the views of someone more knowledgable.

[1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/New-Turing-Omnibus-K-Dewdney/dp/080... [2] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware/dp/... [3] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Structure-Interpretation-Computer-E... [4] https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html

This should be on this list http://www.amazon.com/How-Solve-It-Modern-Heuristics/dp/3540... single best technical book I have ever read.

Also, if you ever need to give a gift, http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Turing-Omnibus-Excursions/dp/0...

The book Algorithmics: The Spirit of Computing doesn't read like a textbook to me, and it's quite interesting.

http://www.amazon.com/Algorithmics-Spirit-Computing-David-Ha...

The New Turing Omnibus

http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Turing-Omnibus-Excursions/dp/0...

is also good, as is Code by Charles Petzold.

http://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Softwa...

AFTER EDIT: While I thought about the first three books I mentioned, I thought of another, Write Great Code, Volume 1: Understanding the Machine by Randall Hyde.

http://www.amazon.com/Write-Great-Code-Understanding-ebook/d...