My personal definition of a "short" programming book is a book with less than ~500 pages, but YMMV. So if you have a different definition of a short book, feel free to post. If you can, please post the number of pages of the book you are recommending. General programming books and books about a specific area of programming are both welcome.
A good example: The C Programming Language - 274 pages
A bad example: Any of the "Learn to do X in Y hours/days" types of books.
Books cannot be judged by the count of pages. Some say a lot with little words... Another say nothing with 1000 pages. Also it depends on what topic they're. Some areas has more to say..., other - less. General programming book could include much more info, compared to a book for very specific and narrowed knowledge.
And what is the purpose of this question anyway ? I don't think counting pages is a good measure of quality !
Two excellent books for getting to the "meta" of programming, The C Programming Language by K&R, and Advanced Programing in the Unix Environment by Stevens.
This list might a bit too long for you, but the Fogcreek software reading list is full of must read programming books like "Code complete" and "Pragmatic programmer"
Edit: Here the list http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FogCreekMBACurriculum.html
Another good one: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2004/02/recommended-reading-for-developers.html
You're question is a bit open-ended but I like Hello, World by Sande for beginning programming. I also like C# in Depth by this fellow named Skeet that has been known to stop by SO once in awhile.
I don't judge books by their page count (or cover, for that matter). I think you need to be more clear about what you are looking for.
256 pages, according to Amazon. Awesome, I never noticed that before! I wonder if it was on purpose?
The Mythical Man Month - its a quick read, but oh so important. (Originally under 200 pages, I think. 300 pages now).
This is one of my favourites...
The Art of Unit Testing by Roy Osherove http://www.manning.com/osherove/ 320 pages
JavaScript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford. Excellent, very short and very much to the point.
Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change by Kent Beck with Cynthia Andres. 224 pages.
Not a book, but I recommend Havoc's Free Software UI, especially the section "The Question of Preferences".
Despite the name, it's not really exclusive to free software, though it uses that for most of its examples.