If I would select a book about game development, I would select
Game Design. Secrets of the Sages Guide
by Marc Saltzman 
german title: Game Design. Die Geheimnisse der Profis. Erfahrungen der besten Designer der Welt I'm proud to have the first edition from 1999 with this beautiful cover, it really looks like a secret book.. the covers of the second edition you can buy at amazon looks like crap, so I made a shot with my cam to provide this picture
Its about: everything. It covers
- genres and perspectives
- genre guides (action, strategy, adventures, rpgs, sports, puzzles, sim)
- conception: character creation, storyboards, design documents
- puzzle design
- leveldesign
- missiondesign
- programming
- artificial intelligence
- game art: graphics
- animation
- UI and controls
- sound engineering
- music in games and subliminal perception
- testing, QA
- marketing and public relations
- website design in the meaning of games
- technical support and customer service
- own production and shareware
- ways to get into the game-dev business
- agents and headhunters
- design schools
- website list
- events, organisations and awards
It all bases upon interviews and columns, star designers wrote for saltzman. You will find really great insight views by articles from Al Lowe, Shigeru Miyamoto, David Perry, John Romero, Marc Aubanel, Joshua Staub, Sid Meier and many many more professionals in the industry. There are articles about the AI in AoE II, how they balanced the AI in FIFA soccer, how they designed the level maps in Quake1,2,3:Arena, HalfLife, Oddworld and HexenII, how they designed the missions in Star Craft, how valve did the sound engineering in Half Life and so on.
This is a very underestimated book. Most reviewers on amazon are disappointed, just because it doesnt provide a technical insight in DX or OpenGL, that there are not much listing how to do stuff and so on - this is exactly the reason why I hate books which say they deal with game design or "secrets" and all I get is some sourcecode and no real insight how to make games.
I think this is a great book, I read it several times and even if its has been instanced first in 1999, its up-to-date, because it talks about principles and secrets which will never be outdated. Its like a big "look behind the scenes".. or like drinking some beer with the most interesting people in the industry which made the most interesting games ever. Marc Saltzman has written a very precisely and extremely informative book, that every insider, gamer or potential game developer should read. I cannot say anything negative about this, except that the games they are dealing with, could not appeal to you, because at that time Peter Molineux was in development on Black and white 1. I guess, this isnt a reason why not to buy a book.
I dont know the current edition, maybe he added some newer articles. Get it for 20 Euro or whatever at amazon.. I promise: you will be satisfied afterwards.
[EDIT]
I agree with Caitlyn, I buyed "a theory of fun" as well and I didnt liked it as well. It was recommended by gamasutra I think, so, I buyed it. Its very small and thin and the additional comics are unnecessary. I didnt got much interesting things out of this.
