From the hip: Knuth, Brooks, Gray, Sussman. General theory type stuff rather than specific technologies. Stuff on how to think about problems rather than specific solutions.

Oldcomputerbooks.com focuses on computer material from the 1940s through about 1975. Some years back they bought my volumes of Knuth's TAOCP and one book by Edsger Dijkstra, _The Discipline of Programming_, but not anything more recent.

These may not "last a lifetime" in some sense. But early computing books, especially by well-known authors, may come close.

I have a more recent one from 1990. "Introduction to the Theory of Programming Languages" by Bertrand Meyer. It is math heavy.

IMO, the following would be in that category:

Algorithms, unix networking, assembly books, the art of computer programming, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, anything by Benjamin Pierce, good compiler books, discrete mathematics, the art of electronics, Princeton Companion to Mathematics, Spivak's Calculus, ...

Theory of Computation