Non-fiction

Non-fiction includes books that are not in a specific technical field in which I am interested.

Godel, Escher, Bach : An Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas R. Hofstadter

Still working on this one...

The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language, by Steven Pinker

Superb! 10 out of 10.

Show-Stopper! : The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft, G. Pascal Zachary

This book sounds and looks more interesting than it is. It contains some useful information into why and how NT was developed, but overall the treatment is very shallow, and the book as a whole is rather frustrating in that respect. I'm giving this book a low score partly because, despite the fact that the author had good access to all of the key players, he was still unable to produce an absorbing and exciting story out of such great raw material. His analogies explaining the roles of the OS and application were unbelievably lame, and I can't believe that any non-technical person would find them illuminating in the slightest. Zachary's habit of using the same style to introduce each new "character" (and, often, dropping them two pages later) became particularly tiresome.

(Since writing the above, I found this review, which says that "the correct author for the job was lacking." 'Nuff said.)

JohnR, Dec 29th, 1997. 4 out of 10.

Architects of the Web : 1,000 Days That Built the Future of Business, Robert H. Reid.

Structured as a series of chapters on particular people instrumental in leading Internet technologies and sites, this book is an entertaining tour through the meteoric rise of the Web. Reid does a great job of telling the story of the people behind the technology (and the hype!). It's technically on the light side, and, as one of the reader reviews on amazon.com pointed out, not about the architects of the Web at all, really. Also, it's already a little out of date (completed in December 96). By the end I found myself slogging through the last couple of chapers, but overall I really enjoyed reading this book and catching up with everything that's been happening (just where was I when all these people were busy being meteoric...?)

I found a number of chapters particularly instructive, such as the one about advertising revenue -- I finally understand something about where the money comes from. If you've been around for a while and find banners just plain irritating, it's interesting to find out that this is -- more-or-less -- what is driving the whole thing financially, at least for the moment.

JohnR, Dec 18, 1997. 8 out of 10.

The Gutenberg Elegies : The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age, Sven Birkerts.

Not much to review here. I bought this book when I was somewhat disillusioned (to say the least) with computers in general and computer programming in particular. I thought the book might help me understand this, but, in the middle of a rather long and rambling chapter about Birkert's passionate years as a would-be novelist and subsequent failure as such, I got very bored with him and put the book down. If Birkerts had bothered to stay on the subject and not been so pathetically self-indulgent, I might have something more to say about the rest of this book.

These days, I think that arguments about how new technology damages (Birkerts goes further -- the new technology is the "devil"!) the supposedly-ages-old habit of reading pretty much miss the point. We have a new medium, and we use it how we choose to use it. Those who explore the medium influence what it becomes for us, and those (like Birkerts) who sit back and lament the supposed end of a beloved pastime and profession are blinkered and not a little arrogant.

JohnR, Dec 1997.