G"odel, Escher, Bach An Eternal Golden Braid
Douglas Hofstadter
Basic Books, 1979
ISBN 0-394-74502-7
This book reads like an intellectual Grand Tour of hacker preoccupations. Music, mathematical logic, programming, speculations on the nature of intelligence, biology, and Zen are woven into a brilliant tapestry themed on the concept of encoded self-reference. The perfect left-brain companion to "Illuminatus!".