The Soul of a New Machine

A fun story about the engineering behind a new computer. It's got some good moments, but relies too much on telling us what beards people wear and what they were like as children. Maybe it's mentioned in the prologue, but I didn't realize this book was written by some guy who was just paid to follow the progress of the engineering — it really detracts from the story, since it becomes evident that this book wasn't written due to the historic impact of the thing they were building. No, they just happened to have a journalist around.

All in all, you probably know already whether or not you're going to read this book.