My own humble suggestions - although the books are hardly forgotten. But I think people focus a lot on technical / engineering books, and very little on design / user experience / human behavior, which arguably contribute much more to the overall impressions end users have of programmers' work.
First, the greatest book of all time, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin - an amazingly introspective and insightful look into how to live an examined life and improve oneself.
And then if you want to learn lower-case "design thinking", my top 10 books
* Design for Everyday Things - duh. I re-read chunks of it all the time.
* Tufte - hard to pick one, I might actually be iconoclastic and go with Visual Explanations which I think has more to offer programmers over pure data visualization. Again, just grab one every day, flip through 3-4 pages, rinse, repeat.
* User Story Mapping - Extremely memorable book - it gives you a pretty clear field guide on prioritization, empathy, communication ... just a great book.
* Badass by Kathy Sierra - I flip through this book again and again. It is gospel truth about what motivates humans.
* The Field Guide to Human-Centered Design - IDEO's most practical book. (Close second: Designing Interactions.)
* Universal Methods of Design - another deeply practical book, lots of good tips and examples.
* Universal Principles of Design - Sister book to the Universal Methods. Again, straightforward, flip to any page and get an idea when you're brainstorming.
* Thinking in Systems - I recommend you skim this book through, but come back to it a lot, it grows with you.
* Inspired by Marty Cagan - again, love nuts and bolts process books.
* Don't Make Me Think! - still a classic, still see these mistakes being made all the time in modern app dev.
First, the greatest book of all time, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin - an amazingly introspective and insightful look into how to live an examined life and improve oneself.
And then if you want to learn lower-case "design thinking", my top 10 books
* Design for Everyday Things - duh. I re-read chunks of it all the time.
* Tufte - hard to pick one, I might actually be iconoclastic and go with Visual Explanations which I think has more to offer programmers over pure data visualization. Again, just grab one every day, flip through 3-4 pages, rinse, repeat.
* User Story Mapping - Extremely memorable book - it gives you a pretty clear field guide on prioritization, empathy, communication ... just a great book.
* Badass by Kathy Sierra - I flip through this book again and again. It is gospel truth about what motivates humans.
* The Field Guide to Human-Centered Design - IDEO's most practical book. (Close second: Designing Interactions.)
* Universal Methods of Design - another deeply practical book, lots of good tips and examples.
* Universal Principles of Design - Sister book to the Universal Methods. Again, straightforward, flip to any page and get an idea when you're brainstorming.
* Thinking in Systems - I recommend you skim this book through, but come back to it a lot, it grows with you.
* Inspired by Marty Cagan - again, love nuts and bolts process books.
* Don't Make Me Think! - still a classic, still see these mistakes being made all the time in modern app dev.