# 18 book reading list for computer history

from broad strokes to the lore to the stories to the tangents to the UNIX,
these are must reads for every hacker.

* * *

### 18 book reading list for computer history

#### from broad strokes to the lore to the stories to the tangents to the
UNIX, these are must reads for every hacker.

The tech industry has a bad case of memory loss these days. Luckily, previous
generations of the industry (along with journalists and academics) have done a
pretty good job of cataloguing and contextualizing our history for us.

If you have any interest in engaging in or interacting with the tech industry,
knowing the history gives you the upper hand. With that in mind, here are my
picks for the minimum set of volumes you should read, in order to get a
general idea of the important bits of computer history.

#### The broad strokes

 _Rise of the Machines_ , by Thomas Rid

 _The Information_ , by James Gleick

#### The lore

 _The Devouring Fungus_ , by Karla Jennings

 _The New Hacker’s Dictionary_ , by Eric S. Raymond

 _Out of Control_ , by Kevin Kelly

 _Microserfs_ , by Douglas Rushkoff

 _In the Beginning… Was the Command Line_ , by Neal Stephenson

 _Man-Made Minds_ , by M. Mitchell Waldrop

#### Stories

 _Turing’s Cathedral_ , by George Dyson

 _Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution_ , by Steven Levy

 _What the Dormouse Said_ , by John Markoff

 _Fire in the Valley_ , by Michael Swaine and Paul Freiberger

 _Possiplex_ , by Theodor Holm Nelson

 _Weaving the Web_ , by Tim Berners-Lee

#### Tangents

 _The Idea Factory_ , by Jon Gertner

 _Interface Culture_ , by Stephen Johnson

#### UNIX

 _The Art of Unix Programming_ , by Eric S. Raymond

 _The Unix Haters Handbook_ , by Simson Garfinkel, Daniel Weise, and Steven
Strassman

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By [John Ohno](https://medium.com/@enkiv2) on [December 28,
2016](https://medium.com/p/eab5f942bf34).

[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@enkiv2/a-short-reading-list-for-computer-
history-eab5f942bf34)

Exported from [Medium](https://medium.com) on September 18, 2020.