Textbooks

There have emerged a number of excellent textbooks in the design and analysis of combinatorial algorithms. Below we point out several of our favorites. In this book, we have shied away from giving a detailed exposition or analysis of many algorithms, for our primary mission is to help the reader identify their problem and point them to solutions. The reader is encouraged to turn to these sources for more detail once they have found the name of what they are looking for.  

Only general algorithm books are discussed here. Books on specific subareas of algorithms are reviewed at the head of the relevant catalog chapter.

• Cormen, Leiserson, and Rivest [CLR90] - This is the one (other) book on algorithms you must own, with its comprehensive treatment of most of the problems we discuss here, including data structures, graph algorithms, and seminumerical algorithms.
• Baase [Baa88] - This book is more accessible than [CLR90] for those without a strong mathematical background. It covers standard sorting, string, and graph algorithms, NP-completeness, and more exotically, an introduction to parallel algorithms.
• Manber [Man89] - Built around the unconventional notion that induction is the fundamental paradigm of algorithm design, this book is especially good at teaching techniques for designing algorithms and has an outstanding collection of problems. Highly recommended.  
• van Leeuwen [vL90b] - Not a textbook, but a collection of in-depth surveys on the state of the art in algorithms and computational complexity. Although the emphasis is on theoretical results, this book is perhaps the best single reference to point you to what is known about any given problem.
• Syslo, Deo, and Kowalik [SDK83] - This book includes printed Pascal implementations of 28 algorithms for discrete optimization problems, including mathematical programming, network optimization, and traditional operations research problems such as knapsack and TSP. Each algorithm is described in the book, and experimental timings (on a 1980s vintage machine) are provided. These codes are now available by ftp, as discussed in Section . Despite its age, this remains a useful reference, particularly with the programs now available on-line.  
• Moret and Shapiro [MS91] - This algorithms text distinguishes itself by including Pascal implementations of all algorithms and by its careful experimental comparisons of different algorithms for such problems as sorting and minimum spanning tree. It provides a useful model for how to properly do empirical algorithm analysis. These programs are available by ftp - see Section for details.
• Knuth [Knu94] - This book presents the implementation of the Stanford GraphBase, a collection of programs for constructing different graphs and working with them. See Section for details. It is very intriguing to browse.
• Aho, Hopcroft, and Ullman [AHU74] - This was the first modern algorithms book, and it has had an enormous influence on how algorithms should be taught. Although it is now dated, it remains a useful guide to certain topics in vogue in the early 1970s, such as matrix multiplication, the fast Fourier transform, and arithmetic algorithms. A more elementary edition, focusing on data structures, is [AHU83].
• Rawlins [Raw92] - This may well be the best self-study book available on algorithms. It is fun and inspiring, with built-in pauses so the reader can make sure they understand what is going on. The only drawback is a somewhat idiosyncratic set of topics, so you will miss certain important topics. But you can get that from here. Rawlins's book can teach you the proper mindset to think about algorithms.  
• Papadimitriou and Steiglitz [PS82] - This book has more of an operations research emphasis than most algorithms texts, with a good coverage of mathematical programming, network flow, and combinatorial search.
• Lawler [Law76] - Particularly useful for its coverage of matroid theory, this book also provides a thorough treatment of the network flow, matching, and shortest path algorithms known by the mid-1970s.
• Binstock and Rex [BR95] - Although not a textbook, it includes C language implementations of an idiosyncratic variety of algorithms for programmers. Disks containing the code are available for a modest fee. The most interesting implementations are string and pattern matching algorithms, time and date routines, an arbitrary-precision calculator, and a nice section on checksums and cyclic-redundancy checks.