Why I recommend this book:

This is the reference manual for C programming—written by the creators of the language themselves, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie. Despite its age, this book has aged beautifully because C is a stable language that has remained largely unchanged at its core. It’s dense, comprehensive, and doesn’t waste pages—every sentence contains essential knowledge. This is not a book that teaches you programming from scratch; it’s a manual about the C language itself, perfect for experienced developers who need a definitive reference. The exercises are well-designed, and working through them will make you truly understand C. Even though it covers ANSI C/C89, the fundamentals it teaches are timeless and applicable to modern C programming. This is the book I turn to when I need to understand how C actually works, not how someone thinks it should work.