Coders at Work was very inspiring to me and also gave me the functional programming bug. It seemed like every one of the legends interviewed had something nice to say about Haskell (deserved IMO).<p>Founders at Work is also great but in some ways more of a business book. If you want to do a startup it is incredibly inspirational.<p>Another oldie but goodie is Tracy Kidder's Soul of a New Machine.
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Soul-New-Machine-Tracy-Kidder/dp/0316491977/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&#38;s=books&#38;qid=1263916384&#38;sr=8-6" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Soul-New-Machine-Tracy-Kidder/dp/03164...</a>