There is no requirement that the student purchase any particular book. There are three books which surround this course; each has its strengths and weaknesses.
This is the official textbook for the course. It presents a design-oriented approach to the subject, and, by far, follows the course outline and topics most closely. Unfortunately, the presentation is not as clear as that of some other texts. Only this book has been ordered by local bookstores.
There are two versions of this book which are in print. One expresses the algorithms in a high-level pseudocode, and the other in C++. For clarity of concept without unnecessary detail, the pseudocode version of the book has been selected as the course text. However, for each pseudocode program in the text, the corresponding C++ program may be found on-line, at the home page of the textbook: http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~raj/BOOK.html.
This book is a standard reference on the analysis of algorithms, and is very well written. It is very strongly recommended as a reference book. Unfortunately, it uses a problem-by-problem organization, rather than a design-strategy organization, and so is not well suited for this course. Also, it does not cover search algorithms, a major topic of this course.
This book was used in a previous offering of the course. It presents a design-oriented approach, and is reasonably well written. However, its coverage of topics is not as extensive as that of Horowitz et al.
In addition to the course text, there will be relatively detailed overhead slides, as well as a few papers from the literature. These materials will be available for download on the course web page.