The Soul of A New Machine

Name: The Soul of A New Machine
Brand: Hachette Audio
Availability: InStock
Rating: 4.25 (4 reviews)
Author: Tracy Kidder
ISBN: 9781478937449

Author: Tracy Kidder

Narrator: Ben Sullivan

Unabridged: 9 hr 3 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Little, Brown & Company

Published: 05/17/2016

Categories: Nonfiction, Computers & Technology, Business & Economics, Technology & Engineering, History, Biography & Autobiography, Science & Technology

Synopsis

Tracy Kidder's "riveting" (Washington Post) story of one company's efforts to bring a new microcomputer to market won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and has become essential reading for understanding the history of the American tech industry.
Computers have changed since 1981, when The Soul of a New Machine first examined the culture of the computer revolution. What has not changed is the feverish pace of the high-tech industry, the go-for-broke approach to business that has caused so many computer companies to win big (or go belly up), and the cult of pursuing mind-bending technological innovations.
The Soul of a New Machine is an essential chapter in the history of the machine that revolutionized the world in the twentieth century.
"Fascinating...A surprisingly gripping account of people at work." --Wall Street Journal

About Tracy Kidder

Tracy Kidder graduated from Harvard and studied at the University of Iowa. He has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, and many other literary prizes. The author of Strength in What Remains, My Detachment, Mountains Beyond Mountains, Home Town, Old Friends, Among Schoolchildren, House, and The Soul of a New Machine, Tracy Kidder lives in Massachusetts.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Paul

I can't believe this is not required reading for a computer architecture course! In my high school Biology, H.G. Wells' The Time Machine was assigned to be read over the winter vacation. It was a bit of a stretch, but did make the class a bit more interesting. As I read Kidder describe the toil unde......more

Goodreads review by Koen

Books written by journalists in general and non-fiction Pulitzer winners in particular are—in my experience—universally garbage, but this was a specific recommendation, so I thought I'd give it a try. I shouldn't have. The Soul of a New Machine describes the development process of Data General's Ecli......more

Goodreads review by Ben

The Soul of A New Machine is an engineers soap opera following a rag-tag team of neophytes driven by their own Captain Ahab to build a revolutionary 32-bit computer for the now-defunct Data General in the late 1970s. Tracey Kiddler, the author, was given a rare opportunity as a journalist to follow......more