CLRS was also the undergraduate textbook at my school, RIT. I didn't think it did a very good job of explaining algorithms if you didn't already have a good gra

CLRS was also the undergraduate textbook at my school, RIT. I didn't think it did a very good job of explaining algorithms if you didn't already have a good grasp of them. Skiena on the other hand does a nice job of both describing the algorithm in a straightforward manner and also getting you into the algorithm headspace.