Wanted to second the ambivalence around the CLRS Intro to Algorithms book - having learned a few algorithms by poring through its chapters, I can definitely say

Wanted to second the ambivalence around the CLRS Intro to Algorithms book - having learned a few algorithms by poring through its chapters, I can definitely say it's a long, out-of-the-way route to take for a practicing programmer. I may not have enough hindsight (bought it a year ago) to truly say whether the dense mathematical approach was valuable to me long-term, but for now I'd say a wikipedia article or a less formal, more to-the-point book like Jon Bentley's Programming Pearls is time much more well spent, unless you are actually aiming to work in academia for a computer science department.