The most amazing computer book ever. It has Doug Englebart's first description of “augmenting the human intellect” using computers. It describes what we know now as windows (generic) with pointing devices. It has an early linear document retrieval system using page ranks based on word co-occurrences and it has an early language translation system (Russian to English with examples of translating Soviet missile papers). What a preview of things to come.
It is worth a read just to get into the heads of some of the computing pioneers.
Another required reading book for all aspiring CS students should be John Von Neumann’s the “Computer and the Brain.” Dated, but again this is what they were thinking.
We have a lot to be humble about given the hardware and compilers they had to work with. Not to mention primitive development environments, a.k.a. the card punch.
The one day you'd sell your soul for something, souls are a glut.