Real-Time Rendering (2nd Edition) 
The term rendering, as it applies to computer graphics, refers to the mathematically intensive process of creating a picture or sequence of frames based on geometry. The duration of this process is dependent on the complexity of the scene (a forest with many trees and thousands of leaves will take much longer to render than a scene consisting of a white box over a gray background) and the speed of the hardware doing the calculations.
When Pixar's Toy Story was first released, the computer animation community was all abuzz with how it was done, and someone at Pixar mentioned that over 100 SGI workstations were used for rendering the frames over the course of almost two years. Someone else extrapolated this data and figured out that the same movie could have been rendered on one contemporary PC over the course of about 80 years.
The authors deftly answer the question, not only asserting that it can be done, but since this book is a programmer's guide, they list snippets of programming algorithms that help outline how it can be done.
Because the software and hardware is constantly and rapidly evolving due to the insatiable need for more realistic and complex graphics, the book avoids getting too specific. To quote the authors, "The field is rapidly evolving, and so it is a moving target." This lack of specificity doesn't detract from the usefulness of the book, though. Instead, it works at a higher, more abstract level, describing approaches to rendering techniques using generic algorithms. It is up to the programmer to apply these methods to the specific program or system on which it is to be implemented.
Real-Time Rendering describes some very complex methods, and this book is not for the average computer graphics creator. However, if you are working in an industry that depends on real-time rendered animation--like the gaming, medical, or military fields--or you are building the next-generation real-time render engine, this book will offer insight and concepts you can use to build some impressive software. --Mike Caputo
Reviews
That being said, the book in conjunction with the book's online resources site is pretty much a stand alone reference on the state of the art in rendering techniques today.
The chapter on acceleration algorithms is worth the price of this book alone. They do a great job motivating the need for culling and presenting several algorithms. I found their quad tree material particularly useful while working on one of my own.
The chapter on intersection test methods provides a handy reference. I find myself referring to it quite often. I also really liked the chapter on graphics hardware as it's hard to find a good source for this type of information at a high level.
This is probably the best computer graphics book out there right now and anyone working in the field or aspiring too should have a copy of it.