[tikhonj]

If you really want to get into the details about a specific language, anything from the three "History of Programming Languages"[1] (HOPL) conferences is great. These conferences, convened every ~15 years, have talks by the creators of various seminal programming languages recounting their histories.

You can probably find most of the HOPL papers online as well as recordings of talks from the later conferences. There's a lot of material! Personally, I really liked "A History of Haskell: Being Lazy with Class"[2][3], partly because I like Haskell and partly because Simon Peyton Jones is such an engaging speaker.

[1]: http://research.ihost.com/hopl/HOPL.html

[2]: paper: http://haskell.cs.yale.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/histor...

[3]: recorded talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bjXGrycMhQ

[johansch]

The book with papers from the second conference (in the 90s) is quite good:

http://www.amazon.com/History-Programming-Languages-Thomas-B...