The Soul of a New Machine

I just re-read The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder. Just stellar. If you're interested at all in the history of computing, you really must read this book. It follows a team of engineers designing and building an early 32-bit minicomputer in the late 70's. Kidder was brought in quite early in the development to document the process and he did an exemplary job of it.

If you're too cheap to buy it and your local library doesn't have it, you can borrow my copy. Yeah, that's right. It's now part of my library, it's that good. (I read 20 or 30 novels a year, and they normally go out the door as quickly as they came in.)