CS is like math, not philosophy -- the fundamental ideas are gradually refined by a community, and eventually someone puts them into a book. Usually there are many books and people have different favorites. So the closest parallels are original research papers like Turing's and Shannon's; but you're probably better off reading more recent textbooks. That said, to balance out the heavy emphasis on programming and engineering books here, some recommendations: - Sipser. Introduction to the Theory of Computation. - Russell, Norvig. AI: A Modern Approach. - For algorithms I don't have a preference. There is Dasgupta-Papadimitriou-Vazirani; Cormen-Leisersen-Rivest-Stein; Kleinberg-Tardos; and more. A bit farther from core CS, I also like: - Cover, Thomas. Elements of Information Theory. - Li, Vitanyi. An Introduction to Kolmogorov Complexity and Its Applications
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