Interesting thread! I can't list them all, there have been many over the last 20+ years, but some of the most decisive have been (in no particular order) 1) Graphics Gems (all of them) 2) AMIGA RKMs (ROM Kernel Manuals) 3) the best to help me go from C to C++: Thinking in C++ by Bruce Eckel(vol1+vol2) (both are free downloadable as PDF as well) Hope this helps!