The Art Of Computer Programming: Fundamental Algorithms (Volume - 1)

First, the price is very, very reasonable.
Second, if there are two things software is known for, those can be the facts that software is always delivered late and full of bugs. Knuth will not teach you best programming practices like design patterns ( don't except those form the books ) but he will teach you one thing : how to write software you're confident in and about. No matter how good is your software architecture if its performance is bad or the algorithms are wrongly implemented, yes it is will be delivered late and buggy - there is no harder bug to discover than that in the logic of the program. So if you intend to write software you can be pride of, buy this book.

But there are two warnings :
1/ if you are not very comfortable with mathematics, things may be tight but for the serious student or practitioner, i don't thing that's a reason not to get the book because without the maths these books wouldn't be trustworthy. If things get harder, try harder!
2/ the book - in my edition - uses the MIX hypothetical processor and lately MMIX - which is better. In case you have an experience with any assembly language that will be a plus but if you don't, no worries. Say you can program in C. Grab a simulator out there and start learning from it. In the mean time start implementing your own simulator. As you advance through the books, you'll discover new algorithms or make your owns and improve your simulator. Like that you'll learn faster and better. At least that is my approach while learning.

In a nutshell, the journey will be long but very worth it!

First of all many thanks Flipkart for delivering it in a single day less than 24 hours !!! booked it from office in night around 10pm and next day 2 pm book was in my hand .. awesome
coming to book
This is very very interesting book as it gives a very different perspective to look at algos .. if you are not comfortable with maths you mind is going to spin .. but hold on don't ignore it for that reason .. end of teh day you want to be a good programmer right ? so its worth putting the effort right now under knuth's proper guidance .. u will never regret in life for the effort you will put on this book
Happy reading..

The price is reasonable and the book covers all the best practices while developing a code for a particular application..the book is worth buying especially for computer science students.