Donald Knuth

I slogged and marvelled  through his books when they came out starting in 1968, there are so many embedded gems.  My friends at my first 'coding' job gave me a copy when I moved on to grad school .... WSJ has a good overview of him,  his work and expression of this strange 'art'.    These books are quite technical, but worth having for any practitioner, past or present.

The Yoda of Silicon Valley
Donald Knuth, master of algorithms, reflects on 50 years of his opus-in-progress, “The Art of Computer Programming.”   ...

" ... With more than one million copies in print, “The Art of Computer Programming” is the Bible of its field. “Like an actual bible, it is long and comprehensive; no other book is as comprehensive,” said Peter Norvig, a director of research at Google. After 652 pages, volume one closes with a blurb on the back cover from Bill Gates: “You should definitely send me a résumé if you can read the whole thing.”

 ... "