I own two copies of this book--one for the client site, and one for the home office. If I could only own one book on C, this would be it. Years ago I used this as a tutorial--I still use it as a reference. ( )

The definitive book of C. Concise and complete. Known simply as "Kernighan and Ritchie" by the entire programming community, this book needs no further recommendation. If you want to program C, you need this book. ( )

Basically, it covers just enough to learn C, and no more. I like that approach best. Too verbose and I feel like I’m being patronized. Too spare, and I’m having to look things up elsewhere. There are now better languages for much of the software that people want, but C works well for a lot of basic programs and for some more complex ones. If you need or want to work on those, this book is the place from which to lean the language.

(Full review at my blog) ( )

K&R is the archetype of a programming language book written for programmers. (I'm tempted to say "also for non-programmer UNIX geeks", but in some sense there is no such thing.) For best results, combine this classic with Kernighan's & Pike's The UNIX Programming Environment. [2008-04-26] ( )

Absolute classic, must have in every student shelf, even if he isn't that much into C. ( )