Here's an incomplete bibliography of visualization stuff.
It probably contains some errors.  However, I have spent
some time tracking down good overviews and seminal work
in visualization, and I think the most important ones are listed below.
Perhaps this will be useful to someone.
Scroll down further for complete BibTeX entries.
If you're only going to buy 1 or 2 books on visualization,
I suggest spence2001 and card1999.
To find only the books in the list below, search for the string @book


Overviews of (Information) Visualization (books):
   bertin1967,bertin1977,
   tufte1983,tufte1990,tufte1997,
   wilkinson1999,
   card1999,ware2000,spence2001,
   card2003,
   thomas2005

   Note that a recent (3rd) edition of bertin1967 is available
   in French, published in France.  I don't know if it's
   available in North America.  It's an amazing book,
   because of all the techniques it contains that people
   could easily assume were invented post-1980.

Overviews, taxonomies, models of (Information) Visualization (papers):
   shneiderman1996,card1997,chi2000,tory2004,chi1998

Blogs:
   http://infosthetics.com
   http://flowingdata.com
   http://eagereyes.org

First use of the term "information visualization": robertson1989
Birth of scientific visualization: mccormick1987
Early use of graphics for abstract data: playfair1786, playfair1801
Seminal example of interactive computational visualization: sutherland1963

Survey paper on multidimensional multivariate data: wong1997
Books on visualization and graphics from the statistics community:
   tukey1977,chambers1983,cleveland1985,cleveland1993,cleveland1988
Early work in glyphs: chernoff1973,kleiner1981,pickett1988
Really early work:
   Ren\'{e} Descartes (1596-1650)
   introduced coordinate systems, and therefore analytic geometry,
   in 1637 in ``La G\'{e}om\'{e}trie'',
   the 3rd appendix to his ``Discourse on the Method''.
   The "cartesian" plane is named after Descartes,
   whose Latin name was Cartesius.

Survey paper on graph visualization: herman2000
Book on graph drawing: dibattista1999
Early work in interactive visualization of graphs: baecker1967
Seminal paper on force directed layout for graph vis: eades1984
Seminal paper on drawing DAGs: sugiyama1981
Seminal/important papers on "classical" node-link drawing of trees:
   wetherell1979,reingold1981,walker1990,buchheim2002
References that identify different ways of drawing trees
   (i.e. node-link diagrams and alternatives):
   bertin1967,knuth1968,eades1993,johnson1991,barlow2001
Interesting ways of drawing graphs that combine node-link diagrams
   with other techniques: harel1988,sindre1993
Seminal papers on treemaps:
   johnson1991,shneiderman1992

Use of motion/animation: woods1984, baecker1990, bartram1997






% animation
@article{woods1984,
   author = {David D. Woods},
   title = {Visual momentum: a concept to improve the
         cognitive coupling of person and computer},
   journal = {International Journal of Man-Machine Studies},
   year = 1984,
   volume = 21,
   pages = {229--244}
}

% animation
@inproceedings{bartram1997,
  author = {Lyn Bartram},
  title = {Can Motion Increase User Interface Bandwidth?},
  booktitle = "Proceedings of IEEE Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics",
  year = 1997,
  pages = {1686--1692}
}

% This is actually a chapter in a book.
% I tried using an "inbook" entry, but then the editor names don't show up.
@misc{baecker1990,
  author={Ronald M. Baecker and Ian Small},
  title={Animation at the Interface},
  note={A chapter (pp. 251--267) in
     Brenda Laurel, editor,
     The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design,
     Addison-Wesley},
  year=1990
}

% seminal work in interactive visualization
@inproceedings{sutherland1963,
  author = {Ivan E. Sutherland},
  title = {Sketchpad: A man-machine graphical communication system},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of AFIPS Spring Joint Computer Conference},
  year = 1963,
  pages = {328--346}
}

% Early work in interactive visualization of graphs
@techreport{baecker1967,
  author = {Ronald M. Baecker},
  title = {Planar Representations of Complex Graphs},
  institution = {Lincoln Laboratory MIT},
  number = {1967-1},
  year = 1967,
  month = {February},
}

% 2nd edition in 1973
% Translated into English 1983
@book{bertin1967,
  author={Jacques Bertin},
  title={S\'{e}miologie graphique:
        Les diagrammes, Les r\'{e}seaux, Les cartes},
  year=1967,
  publisher={\'{E}ditions Gauthier-Villars},
  address={Paris},
  note={(2nd edition 1973, English translation 1983)}
}

@book{bertin1977,
  author={Jacques Bertin},
  title={La graphique et le traitement graphique de l'information},
  year=1977,
  publisher={Flammarion},
  address={Paris}
}

% reprinted in 1992; 2nd edition from 2001
@book{tufte1983,
  author={Edward R. Tufte},
  title={The Visual Display of Quantitative Information},
  year=1983,
  publisher={Graphics Press}
}

@book{tufte1990,
  author={Edward R. Tufte},
  title={Envisioning Information},
  year=1990,
  publisher={Graphics Press}
}

@book{tufte1997,
  author={Edward R. Tufte},
  title={Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative},
  year=1997,
  publisher={Graphics Press}
}

% http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/22949.22950
@article{mackinlay1986,
  author = {Jock D. Mackinlay},
  title = {Automating the Design of Graphical Presentations of Relational Information},
  journal = "ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG)",
  year = 1986,
  month = {April},
  volume = 5,
  number = 2,
  pages = {110--141},
}

% http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/73660.73662
@inproceedings{robertson1989,
  author = {George G. Robertson and Stuart K. Card and Jock D. Mackinlay},
  title = {The Cognitive Coprocessor Architecture
            for Interactive User Interfaces},
  booktitle = "Proceedings of ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST)",
  year = 1989,
  pages = {10--18}
}


@article{mccormick1987,
  author = {Bruce H. McCormick and Thomas A. DeFanti and Maxine D. Brown},
  title = {Visualization in Scientific Computing},
  journal = {Computer Graphics},
  year = 1987,
  month = {November},
  volume = 21,
  number = 6,
}

@inproceedings{shneiderman1996,
  author = {Ben Shneiderman},
  title = {The Eyes Have It:
     A Task by Data Type Taxonomy for Information Visualizations},
  booktitle = "Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages (VL)",
  year = 1996,
  pages = {336--343}
}

@inproceedings{card1997,
  author = {Stuart K. Card and Jock D. Mackinlay},
  title = {The Structure of the Information Visualization Design Space},
  booktitle = "Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization (InfoVis)",
  year = 1997,
  pages = {92--99,125}
}

@inproceedings{chi2000,
  author = {Ed H. Chi},
  title = {A Taxonomy of Visualization Techniques
           using the Data State Reference Model},
  booktitle = "Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization (InfoVis)",
  year = 2000,
  pages = {69--75}
}

@inproceedings{tory2004,
  author = {Melanie Tory and Torsten M\"{o}ller},
  title = {Rethinking Visualization: A High-Level Taxonomy},
  booktitle = "Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization (InfoVis)",
  year = 2004,
  pages = {151--158}
}

@book{wilkinson1999,
  author={Leland Wilkinson},
  title={The Grammar of Graphics},
  year=1999,
  publisher={Springer},
  address={New York}
}

@book{card1999,
  editor={Stuart K. Card and Jock D. Mackinlay and Ben Shneiderman},
  title={Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think},
  year=1999,
  publisher={Morgan Kaufmann Publishers}
}

% This is actually a chapter in a book.
@misc{card2003,
  author={Stuart K. Card},
  title={Information Visualization},
  note={Chapter 28 (pp. 544--582) of
     Julie A. Jacko and Andrew Sears, editors,
     The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook:
     Fundamentals, Evolving Technologies and Emerging Applications,
     Lawrence Erlbaum Associates},
  year=2003
}

@book{ware2000,
  author={Colin Ware},
  title={Information Visualization: Perception for Design},
  year=2000,
  publisher={Morgan Kaufmann Publishers}
}

@book{spence2001,
  author={Robert Spence},
  title={Information Visualization},
  year=2001,
  publisher={ACM Press}
}

@book{playfair1786,
  author={William Playfair},
  title={The Commercial and Political Atlas},
  year=1786,
  edition={1st},
  address={London},
  note = {(3rd edition reproduced in The Commercial and Political Atlas
     and Statistical Breviary, by William Playfair,
     edited and introduced by Howard Wainer and Ian Spence, 2005)}
}

@book{playfair1801,
  author={William Playfair},
  title={The Statistical Breviary},
  year=1801,
  address={London},
  note = {(Reproduced in The Commercial and Political Atlas
     and Statistical Breviary, by William Playfair,
     edited and introduced by Howard Wainer and Ian Spence, 2005)}
}

@book{tukey1977,
  author={John Wilder Tukey},
  title={Exploratory Data Analysis},
  year=1977,
  publisher={Addison-Wesley}
}

% Also published (?) by Chapman and Hall, New York
@book{chambers1983,
  author={John M. Chambers and William S. Cleveland
        and Beat Kleiner and Paul A. Tukey},
  title={Graphical Methods for Data Analysis},
  year=1983,
  publisher={Wadsworth}
}

% Published 1985 and 1994.
@book{cleveland1985,
  author={William S. Cleveland},
  title={The Elements of Graphing Data},
  year=1985,
  publisher={Hobart Press}
}

@book{cleveland1993,
  author={William S. Cleveland},
  title={Visualizing Data},
  year=1993,
  publisher={Hobart Press}
}

@book{cleveland1988,
  editor={William S. Cleveland and Marylyn E. McGill},
  title={Dynamic Graphics for Statistics},
  year=1988,
  publisher={Wadsworth}
}

% This is actually a chapter in a book.
% I tried using an "inbook" entry, but then the editor names don't show up.
@misc{wong1997,
  author={Pak Chung Wong and R. Daniel Bergeron},
  title={30 Years of Multidimensional Multivariate Visualization},
  note={Chapter 1 (pp. 3--33) of
     Gregory M. Nielson, Hans Hagen, and Heinrich M\"{u}ller, editors,
     Scientific Visualization: Overviews, Methodologies, and Techniques,
     IEEE Computer Society},
  year=1997
}

@book{dibattista1999,
  author={Di Battista, Giuseppe and Peter Eades and
          Roberto Tamassia and Ioannis G. Tollis},
  title={Graph Drawing: Algorithms for the Visualization of Graphs},
  year=1999,
  publisher={Prentice-Hall}
}

% survey of graph and tree visualization
@article{herman2000,
  author = {Ivan Herman and Guy Melan\c{c}on and M. Scott Marshall},
  title = {Graph Visualization and Navigation
       in Information Visualization: A Survey},
  journal = "IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG)",
  year = 2000,
  month = {January},
  volume = 6,
  number = 1,
  pages = {24--43}
}

% I suspect this was a paper at a conference,
% but appears to have been published as a journal article.
@article{eades1984,
  author = {Peter Eades},
  title = {A heuristic for graph drawing},
  journal = {Congressus Numerantium},
  year = 1984,
  volume = 42,
  pages = {149--160}
}

@article{sugiyama1981,
  author = {Kozo Sugiyama and Shojiro Tagawa and Mitsuhiko Toda},
  title = {Methods for Visual Understanding of Hierarchical System Structures},
  journal = {IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics},
  year = 1981,
  month = {February},
  volume = {SMC-11},
  number = 2,
  pages = {109--125}
}

@article{wetherell1979,
  author = {Charles Wetherell and Alfred Shannon},
  title = {Tidy Drawings of Trees},
  journal = {IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering},
  year = 1979,
  month = {September},
  volume = {SE-5},
  number = 5,
  pages = {514--520}
}

@article{reingold1981,
  author = {Edward M. Reingold and John S. Tilford},
  title = {Tidier Drawings of Trees},
  journal = {IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering},
  year = 1981,
  month = {March},
  volume = {SE-7},
  number = 2,
  pages = {223--228}
}

@article{walker1990,
  author = {{Walker II}, John Q.},
  title = {A Node-Positioning Algorithm for General Trees},
  journal = {Software---Practice and Experience},
  year = 1990,
  month = {July},
  volume = 20,
  number = 7,
  pages = {685--705}
}

@inproceedings{buchheim2002,
  author = {Christoph Buchheim and Michael J\"{u}nger and Sebastian Leipert},
  title = {Improving {Walker's} Algorithm to Run in Linear Time},
  booktitle = "Proceedings of Symposium on Graph Drawing (GD)",
  year = 2002,
  pages = {344--353}
}


@inbook{knuth1968,
  author={Donald Ervin Knuth},
  title={The Art of Computer Programming, Volume I: Fundamental Algorithms},
  year=1968,
  publisher={Addison-Wesley},
  pages={309--310}
}

@article{eades1993,
  author = {Peter Eades and Tao Lin and Xuemin Lin},
  title = {Two Tree Drawing Conventions},
  journal = {International Journal of Computational Geometry and Applications},
  year = 1993,
  volume = 3,
  number = 2,
  pages = {133--153}
}

@inproceedings{johnson1991,
  author = {Brian Johnson and Ben Shneiderman},
  title = {Tree-maps: A space-filling approach to the
     visualization of hierarchical information structures},
  booktitle = "Proceedings of IEEE Visualization (VIS)",
  year = 1991,
  pages = {284--291}
}

% Note: the title of this article is *not* "a 2-d ..."
@article{shneiderman1992,
  author = {Ben Shneiderman},
  title = {Tree Visualization with Tree-maps: 2-d Space-Filling Approach},
  journal = {ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG)},
  year = 1992,
  month = {January},
  volume = 11,
  number = 1,
  pages = {92--99},
}

@inproceedings{barlow2001,
  author = {Todd Barlow and Padraic Neville},
  title = {A Comparison of 2-D Visualizations of Hierarchies},
  booktitle = "Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization (InfoVis)",
  year = 2001,
  pages = {131--138}
}


% higraphs
@article{harel1988,
  author = {David Harel},
  title = {On Visual Formalisms},
  journal = "Communications of the ACM (CACM)",
  year = 1988,
  month = {May},
  volume = 31,
  number = 5,
  pages = {514--530},
}

@inproceedings{sindre1993,
  author = {Guttorm Sindre and Bj{\o}rn Gulla and H{\aa}kon G. Jokstad},
  title = {Onion Graphs: Aesthetics and Layout},
  booktitle = "Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages (VL)",
  year = 1993,
  pages = {287--291}
}



@book{thomas2005,
  editor={James J. Thomas and Kristin A. Cook},
  title={Illuminating the Path:
         The Research and Development Agenda for Visual Analytics},
  year = 2005,
  month = {August},
  isbn={0-7695-2323-4},
  note = {http://nvac.pnl.gov/agenda.stm}
}







@inproceedings{chi1998,
  author = {Ed H. Chi and John T. Riedl},
  title = {An operator interaction framework for visualization systems},
  booktitle = "Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization (InfoVis)",
  year = 1998,
}



% Introduced Chernoff faces.
@article{chernoff1973,
  author = {Herman Chernoff},
  title = {The Use of Faces to Represent Points
      in K-Dimensional Space Graphically},
  journal = "Journal of the American Statistical Association",
  year = 1973,
  month = {June},
  volume = 68,
  number = 342,
  pages = {361--368}
}

% Uses the word "glyph".
@article{kleiner1981,
  author = {Beat Kleiner and John A. Hartigan},
  title = {Representing Points in Many Dimensions by Trees and Castles},
  journal = "Journal of the American Statistical Association",
  year = 1981,
  month = {June},
  volume = 76,
  number = 374,
  pages = {260--269}
}

% See also related paper on Exvis at GI' 89.
@inproceedings{pickett1988,
  author = {Ronald M. Pickett and Georges G. Grinstein},
  title = {Iconographic Displays for Visualizing Multidimensional Data},
  booktitle = "Proceedings of IEEE Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics",
  year = 1988,
  pages = {514--519}
}