Way back in the day, I picked up a cheap ($5!!!) copy of Readings in Database Systems from Michael Stonebraker. I found it fascinating to read the original papers that proposed concepts, and then to see those concepts implemented and become the norm.
What I didn't expect was the amount of drama within the context of those papers. In Codd's original paper on relational theory in the 60s, he spends a chunk of time dedicated to talking about IBM as "the man". Hilarious.