The Game Programming Gems Series
Dante Tregalia/Mark DeLoura
For beginners and seasoned professionals alike, the GPG series covers every aspect of video game programming. Buying these books will save hours of fiddling around with source code, even for competent programmers.
Each volume contains a series of themed articles from video game professionals, and is accompanied with a CD that contains all the source code and demo applications.
Essentially, these books will give you access to many thousands of person hours of R&D programming time. You may not need every piece of information from every book, but you will certainly find useful nuggets in every chapter.
There are currently 3 titles available in the series, with a fourth scheduled for release in 2003.
Premier Press "Focus On..." Series
Various (series editor Andre LaMothe)
The Focus On series is a relatively new collection of books that cover a specific topic in a fast, easy to read, and thorough manner.
They are perfect for professional programmers who find themselves in a niche, or casual programmers looking for good coverage of a new topic.
Currently, there are 7 titles randing from 3D terrain handling through to developing Quake Arena MODs. The series editor, Andre Lamothe is also CEO of Xtreme Games LLC, sponsors of the Xtreme Games Developers Conference.