Recommended Books on Computer History

General Discussion
1

This thread on Hacker News has a lot of interesting sounding suggestions for books on computer history.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22692281

Some books that got multiple enthusiastic mentions:

Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age
The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal
Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet
Turing’s Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe
The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution
The Soul of a New Machine
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America
The Information: a History, a Theory, a Flood

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2

I have Hackers and The Innovators but haven’t read them yet.

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3

Some books that got multiple enthusiastic mentions:…

Given all the physical store closures during the current COVID-19 Pandemic (e.g., libraries, brick-and-mortar bookstores,…etc) and given that some of us just won’t take the perpetually-touted Amazon Route to purchase books online https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=GDFU3JS5AL6SYHRD , it would certainly help to have these Goodreads titles online-downloadable for free :slightly_smiling_face:

And last time I checked the Internet Archive, I myself wasn’t able to easily find available the above titles (if I did at all :slightly_frowning_face:)

4

You should definitely read Hackers, the definitive book on the subject. Another good read: The Cuckoo’s Egg by Clifford Stoll of Lawrence Livermore fame.

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