Red-black tree
Published , updated
The red-black tree is a type of self-balancing binary search tree that assigns a colour of red or black to each node. On every insert or delete, the tree re-organises itself so that it is approximately \log n nodes high, allowing search in O(\log n) time. The re-organising does not guarantee a perfectly balanced tree, it is however good enough to guarantee O(\log n) search.
Textbooks
Here are two CS textbooks I personally recommend; the Algorithm Design Manual (Steven S. Skiena) is a fantastic introduction to data structures and algorithms without getting to deep into the maths side of things, and Introduction to Algorithms (CLRS) which provides a much deeper, math heavy look.
