This is just a start.  Any books that aren't listed here sent e-mail so I can add them to the database.

Key: italics = comments
         red = owner
         blue number = rating

A Probabilistic Theory of Pattern Recognition; Devroye,Gyorfi,Lugosi; Springer-Verlag; 7; Math,Scientific Programming; sd

ADO 2.0 Programmer's Reference; Sussman, David and Alex Homer; Wrox Press Ltd; 1998; Guide to using ADO for rapid development of your data applications,includes a full reference to its objects and methods; dd

Advanced Perl Programming; Sriram Srinivasan; O'Reilly & Accociates; ; Languages,unix,Perl,Scripting; sd

Advanced Windows; Jeffrey Richter; Microsoft Press; 8; I liked this book. Presents the operating system part of Windows (as opposed to the graphics part of windows). Especially useful are the chapters on memory functions in windows.; Windows; sd

Andrew Glassner's Notebook ; Glassner, Andrew; Morgan Kaufmann; 1999 (August); Recreational Computer Graphics;  Graphics; sd

ANSI Common Lisp;  Graham, Paul;  Prentice Hall;  1995  9 ; Very good introduction to lisp. Graham is an outstanding writer, and I enjoyed reading the book. This is a good book to read before the more advanced 'On Lisp'; Language, Lisp, Bible sd

C++ Gems; Lippman, Stanley Editor; SIGS; 1996; 8; Collected articles from the C++ Report. Some very useful info, and some interesting techniques. Most of the articles are very good.; Languages,C++; sd

C++ Gems; Lippman, Stanley Editor; SIGS; 1996; Programming Pearls from the C++ Reports; dd

C++ How to Program; Deitel, H.M. and P.J. Deitel; Prentice-Hall; 1994; ; dd

C++ Programming Language; Stroustrup, Bjarne; Addison-Wesley; 1997; ; dd

Computational Geometry Algorithms and Applications; De Berg, Van Kreveld, Overmars, Schwarzkopf; Springer-Verlag; 9; This is the book to read on computational geometry.; Computational Geometry; sd

Computational Geometry An Introduction; Preparata,Shamos; Springer-Verlag; 6; This is the book that started it all. Based on Shamos PhD. Thesis. Preparata may just be along for the ride. The de Berg book is much more up to date and useful.; Computational Geometry,Bible; sd

Computational Geometry in C; O'Rourke; Cambridge University Press; 4; O'Rourke needs to learn to program. Many cases are ignored in the algorithms which makes the code useless.; Computational Geometry; sd

Computer and Robot Vision (Vol. 1 & 2); Robert Haralick,Linda Shapiro; Addison-Wesley; 7; Vision,Image Processing,Pattern Recoginition; sd

Computer Architecture A Quantitative Approach; Hennessy,Patterson; Morgan Kaufmann; 8; Hardware architecture book. Not useful for the kind of software we write, but an interesting read.; Hardware,Bible; sd

Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice; Foley,van Dam,Feiner,Hughes; Addison-Wesley; 9; This is the book to read on graphics.; Graphics,Bible; sd

Computer Vision Algorithms in Image Algebra; Gerhard Ritter,Joseph Wilson; CRC Press; 4; Can express algorithms very compactly with this notation, but I didn't find it very useful; Vision,Image Processing; sd

Design Patterns; Gamm, Erich, and Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, John Vlissides; Addison-Wesley; 1995; Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software; dd

Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable OO Software; Gamma,Helm,Johnson,Vlissides; Addison-Wesley; 10; Reading this book WILL improve you designs. A must read.; Patterns,Bible; sd

Designing for the User with OVID; Roberts,Berry,Isensee,Mullaly; Macmillan Technical Publishing; ; User Interface,Graphic Design; sd

Designing the User Interface; Shneiderman; Addison-Wesley; ; User Interface,Graphic Design; sd

Effective COM; Box, Don; Addison-Wesley; 1999; 50 Ways to Improve Your COM and MTS-Based Applications; dd

Elements of the Theory of Computation; Lewis, Harry R. and Christos Papadimitriou; Prentice-Hall; 1981; ; dd

Envisioning Information; Edward Tufte; Graphic Press; 9; Well written book on graphic design. Quick read. Very useful for designing plots and graphs.; Graphic Design,Bible; sd

Essential COM; Box, Don; Addison-Wesley; 1998; ; dd

Essential COM; Don Box; Addison-Wesley; ; Windows,COM,Bible; sd

Exceptional C++ ; Sutter, Herb;  Addison-Wesley;  1999 (Dec.); C++ problems from the creator of ""Guru of the Week"" problems from the C++ newsgroups. Seems to emphasize generic programming and exception safety. I haven't read it yet, so no rating. But looks very good (7 or 8) ; Langauge, C++;  sd

File Structures; Folk,Zoellick,Riccardi; Addison-Wesley;6; File System; sd

Fundamentals of Database Systems; Elmasri, Ramez and Shamkant Navathe; Benjamin/Cummings Publishing Co; 1989; ; dd

Garbage Collection: Algorithms for Automatic Dynamic Memory Management; Jones,Lins; Wiley; 8; Algorithms,Garbage Collection,Bible; sd

GNU Emacs UNIX Text Editing and Programming; Schoonover,Bowie,Arnold; Addison-Wesley; 6; Useful first reference for Emacs, not much more.; Emacs,unix; sd

GNU Make; Stallman,MvGrath; FSF; 5; Useful reference for make.; unix,make; sd

Graph Drawing: Algorithms for the Visualization of Graphs; Battista,Eades,Tamassia,Tollis; Prentice Hall; 8; Algorithms,Graphs,Visualization,Bible; sd

"Graphics Gems (Vol 1,2,3,4)"""; Glassner,Arvo,Kirk,Heckbert; Academic Press; 7; Many individual tricks for graphics programming. The earlier volumes are more useful, the later ones get more academic. There is a vol 5, but I didn't see anything useful in it.; Graphics,Bible; sd

Graphic Java 2, Volume 2, Swing, Geary, David M.; Prentice Hall; 1999; dd

HTML The Definitive Guide; Chuck Musciano,Bill Kennedy; O'Reilly & Accociates; 5; Web; sd

Image Processing, Analysis, and Machine Vision; Milan Sonka,Vaclav Hlavac,Roger Boyle; PWS Publishing; 8; Useful and modern (1999) techniques in this book.; Vision,Image Processing,Pattern Recoginition; sd

Inside The C++ Object Model; Lippman; Addison-Wesley; 7; C++ from a compiler writers point of view. Interesting read, but will not make much difference in your coding. May make compiler behavior more understandable.; Languages,C++; sd

Inside Windows NT; David Solomon; Microsoft Press; ; Windows,NT; sd

Internetworking with TCP/IP; Comer, Douglas; Prentice Hall; 1991; Principles, Protocols, and Architecture; dd

Introduction to Algorithms; Cormen, Thomas H. and Charles E. Leiserson, Ronald L. Rivest; MIT Press; 1990; ; dd

Introduction to Algorithms; Cormen,Leiserson,Rivest; McGraw Hill; 10; I love this book. Many interesting and useful algorithms and data structures.; Algorithms,Bible; sd

Introduction to Database Systems; Date, C.J.; Addison-Wesley; 1986; ; dd

 Java Enterprise in a Nutshell; Flanagan, David and Jim Farley, William Crawford, Kris Magnusson, Paula Ferguson (Editor), Kris Magnusso; Reilly & Associates 1999 (Sept); A Desktop Quick Reference (Nutshell Handbook); dd

Java in a Nutshell Flanagan; David O'Reilly & Associates 1999 (Dec);  A Desktop Quick Reference; dd

JavaSpaces Principles, Patterns, and Practice; Freeman, Hupfer, Arnold; Addison-Wesley; 1999;  Best book on Jini. Written by people involved in Yale's Linda project (which jini is based on). These people have the most experience with these types of systems. Jini is a distributed tuple space; Java, Jini, JavaSpace  sd

Java in a Nutshell; David Flanagan; O'Reilly & Accociates; 6; Languages,Java; sd

Large Scale C++ Software Design; Lakos, John; Addison-Wesley; 1996; ; dd

Large-Scale C++ Software Design; John Lakos; Addison-Wesley; ; Languages,C++; sd

Learning the bash Shell; Cameron Hewham,Bill Rosenblatt; O'Reilly & Accociates; 6; unix,Scripting; sd

lex & yacc; Levine, John and Tony Mason and Doug Brown; O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.; 1992; ; dd

Lisp in Small Pieces; Christian Queinnec; Cambridge University Press; 7; Book on implementing Lisp interpreters. Techniques are useful for implementing any interpreter. An especially interesting chapter is compiling to C.; Language,Lisp,Bible; sd

Mastering Windows NT Server 4, 6th Edition; Minasi, Mark; Sybex Network Press; Includes CD; 1999; dd

MFC Internals; Shepherd,Wingo; Addison-Wesley; 8; Describes how MFC is implemented.; Windows,MFC; sd

ML for the Working Programmer ; Paulson, Lawrence;  Cambridge University Press; 1996; ML has some interesting ideas (it is a strongly typed functional language). I bought the book because after reading 'Design and Evolution of C++' I know Stroustrup borrowed some ideas from ML. However, the writing style really put me off. ML may still be worth reading about, but not from this book;  Language, ML; sd

MTS MSMQ with VB and ASP; Home, Alex and David Sussamn; Wrox Press Ltd.; 1998; ; dd

Multi-Paradigm Design for C++; Coplien; Addison-Wesley; 7; A quick read. Not as good as Cope's Idioms book, but an interesting perspective on design. Presents design as a commonality and variability analysis.; Languages,C++,Design; sd

Multiparadigm Programming in Leda; Timothy Budd; Addison-Wesley; 4; Presents the functional (lisp-like), logic (prolog-like), OO (Smalltalk-like) programming styles. Too elementary to be useful.; Languages,Leda; sd

Multithreading Programming Techniques; Prasad; McGraw Hill; 7; Languages,C,C++,Threads,,Parallel Programming; sd

Numerical Recipes in C; Press,Teukolsky,Vetterling,Flannery; Cambridge University Press; 8; Very useful algorithms, but unfortunately many are translated from Fortran (so array indexes start at 1 for instance).; Math,Scientific Programming,C; sd

Object Oriented Application Frameworks; Gamma,Vissides,et al.; Prentice Hall; 6; Papers on different frameworks. The papers are too short to be very useful.; Design,Patterns,Frameworks; sd

Object-Oreinted Simulation with Hierarchical Model; Zeigler, Bernard; Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; 1990; ; dd

Object-Oriented Modeling and Design; Rumbaugh,Blaha,Premerlani,Eddy,Lorensen; Prentice Hall; 5; Outdated. Use UML instead.; Design; sd

Object-Oriented Software Construction; Meyer; Prentice Hall; 8; Very good book on OOD, but too elementary to be useful to us. May be a good book to recommend to others.; Design,Language,Eiffel; sd

OLE2 Programmer's Reference; Microsoft Corporation; Microsoft Press; 1994; ; dd

On Lisp; Paul Graham; Prentice Hall; 9; This book shows why lisp is so powerful. I bought this book hoping I could use some of the techniques in C++, but you can't. Writing is solid, and I enjoyed the book, even though I can't use most of the techniques presented.; Language,Lisp,Bible; sd

Oracle OL/SQL Programming; Feuerstein, Steven with Bill Pribyl; O'Reilly & Associates; 1997; ; dd

Oracle8, The Complete Reference; Koch, George and Kevin Loney; McGraw-Hill; 1997; ; dd

Pattern Hatching: Design Patterns Applied; Vlissides, John; Addison-Wesley; 7; A quick read. Useful to read after the Design Patterns book; Patterns; sd

Pattern Languages of Program Design (Vol 1,2,3,4); Coplien,Schmidt,Vlissides,Kerth,Martin,Riehle,Buschmann; Addison-Wesley; 8; Proceedings from the PLoP conferences. There are some very useful papers presented, but many of the papers are worthless.; Patterns; sd

Professional DCOM Programming; Grimes, Dr. Richard; WROX Press Ltd.; 1997; ; dd

Programming MS Visual InterDev 6.0; Evans, Nicholas D., Ken Miller, and Ken Spencer; Microsoft Press; 1999; Develop a new generation of thre-tier, transactional Web solutions: CD Included; dd

Programming Perl; Wall, Larry and Tom Chiristiansen,Randal Schwartz; O'Reilly & Accociates; 7; Good book to learn Perl from.; Languages,unix,Perl,Scripting,Bible; sd

Programming Python; Mark Lutz; O'Reilly & Accociates; 7; Good book to learn Python from. I like Python better than Perl as a language.; Languages,unix,Python,Scripting,Bible; sd

Programming Web Graphics; Shawn Wallace; O'Reilly & Accociates; 5; Web,Perl; sd

Programming Windows 95; Petzold,Yao; Microsoft Press; 6; People love this book. I think it is a useful reference, but not much more. Same stuff can be found on MSDN.; Windows,Bible; sd

Programming Windows 95 with MFC; Prosise, Jeff; Microsoft Press; 6; Windows,MFC; sd

Putting Metaclasses to Work; Forman,Danforth; Addison-Wesley; 6; Metaclasses for C++. Some interesting material. Formalizes the C++ object model. I don't think it was worth the time to read though.; Language,C++,SOM,Metaclasses; sd

PVM Parallel Virtual Machine; Geist,Geguelin,Dongarra,Jiang,Manchek,Sunderam; MIT Press; ; Scientific Programming,Parallel Programming; sd

Real-Time UML; Douglass; Addison-Wesley; 5; Design,UML; sd

Ruminations on C++; Koening,Moo; Addison-Wesley; 4; Skip this one. Collected articles from Journal of OOP from Koening. One or two interesting articles, but most of what he covers is covered better elsewhere (esp. Cope's Idioms, Design Patterns, and C++ Gems); Languages,C++; sd

Running Linux ; Welsh, Dalheimer, Kaufman;  O'Reilly & Associates;  1999; Good Linux Reference. Not a book to read but nice to refer to. sd

Scientific and Engineering C++; Barton,Nackman; Addison-Wesley; 7; Useful techniques in this book for fast numeric programming. Some very useful template techniques are presented. This book is where I first saw the Template Sandwich pattern.; Languages,C++,Math,Scientific Programming;sd

Shape in Picture (NATO ASI Series); O,Toet,Foster,Heijmans,Meer; Springer-Verlag; 6; Proceedings from a conference on shape. Some interesting techniques here, but many are not proven.; Vision; sd

Software Fault Tolerance; Lyu, Michael R., Editor; John Wiley & Sons; 1995; ; dd

Solving Geometric Constraint Systems; Kramer; MIT Press; 7; Useful techniques for a parameterized CAD-like system. Based on Kramer's PhD thesis (supervised by Poplestone, my old Prof. At UMASS); Computational Geometry; sd

STL Internals; Rector, Brent and Chris Sells; Addison-Wesley; 1999; ; dd

STL Tutorial and Reference Guide; Musser,Saini; Addison-Wesley; 5; Useful reference, not much more.; Languages,C++,STL; sd

The Annotated C++ Reference Manual; Stroustrup, Bjarne and Margaret Ellis; Addison-Wesley; 1990; ; dd

The Art of the Metaobject Protocol; Kiczales,Rivieres,Bobrow; MIT Press; 6; Skip this one. Some interesting but useless material. I may recommend useless but interesting books like On Lisp, but I can't justify this one.; Language,Lisp,Bible,Metaclasses; sd

The C Programming Language; Kernighan,Ritchie; Prentice Hall; 7; Languages,C,Bible; sd

The Craft of Text Editing; Craig Finseth; Springer-Verlag; 8; The only good book on how to implement text editors. As a side note, Finseth wrote FinalWord.; Emacs,Text Editors,Algorithms; sd

The Geometry Toolbox; Farin,Hansford; A K Peters; 3; Too elementary to be very useful.; Computational Geometry,Graphics; sd

The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual (Vol. 1,2); Lewis,LaLiberte; FSF; 6; Useful reference for Elisp.; Emacs,Language,Lisp; sd

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information; Edward Tufte; Graphic Press; 9; Well written book on graphic design. Quick read. Very useful for designing plots and graphs.; Graphic Design,Bible; sd

Understanding COM+; Platt, David S.; Microsoft Press; 1999; Architecture for Enterprise Development Using Microsoft Technologies; dd

Visual Explanations; Edward Tufte; Graphic Press; 9; Well written book on graphic design. Quick read. Very useful for designing plots and graphs.; Graphic Design,Bible; sd

Window's Graphic Programming; Sanchez,Canton; IDG Books; 5; Poor Index (this book on graphics did not have an index entry for Palette). Covers more recent graphics enhancements to windows. Same stuff can be found on MSDN.; Windows,Graphics,DirectX; sd

Windows NT File System Internals; Rajeev Nagar; O'Reilly & Accociates; 6; Windows NT,File System; sd

Writing GNU Emacs Extensions; Bob Glickstein; O'Reilly & Associates; 6; unix,Emacs,Languages,Lisp; sd