Although the OP seems to be asking for "engineering" not "programming" books, I'm going to second this. Benjamin Pierce's "Types and Programming Languages" will help you get down to what programming is really about. If you are not familiar with lambda calculus and its notation, it may be rough going at first. But lambda calculus is VERY simple, and Pierce takes you through it. The book progresses methodically to the concepts found in most common programming languages.
This is one of the few truly language agnostic books on programming. SICP is close, but it is limited in relevance at times due to the limitations of a particular language (Scheme).
