The book is a bit wordy and hard to read at times. The other major gripe I had is with the code examples. Most variables and method parameters are named a, k, c .. etc. For instance here is a method header in the backtracking section: construct_candidates(int a[], int k, int n, int c[], int *ncandidates)
https://www.amazon.com/Algorithm-Design-Manual-Steven-Skiena/dp/1849967202

