C Programming - Chapter 0 - Preface C Programming for Everybody (cc4e.com)

The preface to C Programming by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie places the C programming language in the context of the other popular programming languages of the 1960's and 1970's FORTRAN, COBOL, Pascal, Algol, and PL/I .  Many concepts like separation of concerns and the use of provided run-time libraries versus language syntax are introduced and described.