Programming for the World: A Guide to Internationalization

This book is well written but quite dated. There is no mention of "Windows" and "Unicode" was only theoretical at the time. It has good background on the central issues of software internationalization but is sadly out-of-date for current software developers (especially if using Windows).

Good introduction to i18n issues. I also feel that it give a pretty complete handling of the basic issues. Great companion for the O'Reilly CJKV book. O'Donnell's book concisely and clearly explains general issues. Specifically: I use it often for the explanation of the various encoding methods and how they are implemented.