Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture

Oh, maybe my idea of "technical" is too narrow. From a typical book perspective it's very technical. I meant it more from a textbook perspective. Code isn't a book you use to teach, or to learn concepts in detail. You could learn plenty of things at a high level, some concepts at a single-example level, but you aren't learning computer architecture or algorithms here. It's the only book I've read that effectively bridges casual reading with textbook ideas, without actually throwing you in the deep end. On a side note, people keep recommending masters of doom to me, I definitely need to check it out myself.

some that I read and recommend: - Turing's cathedral - Hackers: heroes of the computer revolution - masters of doom (game dev history more than cs)

- Paypal Wars. I read this twice -- once back in 2006 or so, before I really knew who any of the people were (Thiel, Musk, etc.). And then once a few years ago. - Chaos Monkeys -- about Facebook circa 2010, touches on YC a few years before that. Somewhat controversial, but a good book. - Weaving the Web by Tim Berners-Lee -- talks about the story from CERN to MIT, etc. Echoing some other posts: - The Idea Factory - The Dream Machine (probably the densest and most informative computer history book I've read) - Masters of Doom - The Supermen (about Seymour Cray) -- I didn't know anything about this side of the industry! Interesting.

The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Those are the two to start with. If you like those, check out some of her nonfiction books: The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism, Philosophy: Who Needs It, and Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (these are but a few - Rand wrote a long series of nonfiction books). Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist by Tara Smith (a philosophy professor at UT-Austin) is excellent because it unpacks Ayn Rand's ethical system in an academic style. Finally, Leonard Peikoff's Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand gives a comprehensive view of Rand's entire philosophy. Light reading (not by Objectivist authors, and not in any particular order): Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture by David Kushner The Soul of A New Machine by Tracy Kidder The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA by James Watson What Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard Feynman Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard Feynman