I'm going to be an advisor for new students in our company (we pay for their degree and provide on-the-job training during their semester breaks) and want to put together a little "welcome packet" to start them off on the right track. Most of them come straight from high school and have never done any CS or programming beyond school classes, so I thought it would be nice to include a book to introduce them to some basic principles and prime them for what they're going to be learning and working with in the following years.<p>Back when I started studying CS, I read "Code" by Charles Petzold which I really enjoyed and would be perfect for this purpose thematically, but I feel that at ~400 pages it might be just a little too lengthy. What are some reads you would recommend to beginners?