As for "outside of a classroom setting", the best book I can recommend is "The Algorithm Design Manual" [2]. It is worth its weight in gold. Very user friendly, as I never though an algorithms book could be. It contains dense material, but at the same time reading it feels like reading a good fiction book. I first heard of it while reading Steve Yegge's post "get that job at google"[3], bought a copy and, wow, what an amazing book.
[1] http://mitpress.mit.edu/algorithms/ [2] http://www.algorist.com/ [3] http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-goog...
http://www.amazon.com/Algorithm-Design-Manual-Steven-Skiena/...
I was a bit flummoxed at first because algorist.com doesn't tell you how to buy the thing, and the Kindle edition appears to be out of date (based on the first edition, obsoleted by the second edition from 2010).
I should have linked to the Amazon page in the first place (who am I kidding?). You linked to the correct version.
I find this book readable and interesting; it does tie the algorithms to practical applications at a high level. It is language-agnostic, so it should be a good fit for almost anybody.
The book was written as a companion to Introduction to Algorithms by CLRS and is comparatively lighter on theory, but still a handy desk reference.
disclaimer: it was written by my undergraduate advisors
I'm specifically interested in books/other resources that lend themselves to self-study. It's easy enough to look up what MIT is using for their Intro to Algorithms course, but it's harder to gauge if a book or other resource is suitable for usage outside of a classroom setting. Bonus points if it has a practical focus so that I can quickly add the gleaned knowledge to my real-world toolkit.