The Cuckoo's Egg

Came here to say this.

The Cuckoo's Egg (Clifford Stoll, 1989)

In my opinion, it's as much a "recommended read" as a lot of other so-called "classics": - Rapid Application Development (also by McConnell) - Soul of a New Machine by Kidder - Mythical Man Month by Fred Brooks - Programming Pearls by John Bentley - Applied Cryptography (2e) by Bruce Schneier - The Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stohl - Structured Computer Organization by Tanenbaum & Todd - Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software by Gamma, Helm, etc - A New Kind of Science by Wolfram And many more could be added to this list Sure, some of them use acronyms or reference technology that you've either never heard of or has been supplanted But you could [nearly] do a find-and-replace on those "outdated" terms with a "current" term, and the books would [effectively] be up-to-date Don't get hung-up on specific examples - they're just there to illustrate the problem domain

The Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll.

No Cuckoos Egg????

Thats an absolute classic that reads like a spy novel detective story, and, at times, Unix manual. Perfect.

I read Cuckoo’s Egg and also liked “The Soul of a New Machine”, “SkunkWorks”, and “The Making of the Atomic Bomb”.

The Cuckoo's Egg true story

There’s a ton of great suggestions here. Here are a couple I haven’t seen mentioned. Documentaries: - Silicon Cowboys - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4938484/ It covers the creation of Compaq - American Experience: Silicon Velley - http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/silicon/ About how Silicon Valley came to be. - Naughty Dog 30th Anniversary - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cdr7THH0zo8 Kind of a PR video, but interesting and free. Covers the history of Naughty Dog games. Books: - Cukoo’s Egg - https://www.amazon.com/Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Computer-Espiona... (https://www.amazon.com/Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Computer-Espionage/dp/1416507787) Has some interesting technical detail, and gives perspective on a very different time on the internet. - Revolution in the Valley - https://www.amazon.com/Revolution-Valley-Insanely-Great-Stor... (https://www.amazon.com/Revolution-Valley-Insanely-Great-Story/dp/1449316247) You can read these stories on folklore.org, but I enjoyed the collected book. Covers the creation of the Macintosh.

Seconded. This is also a great read on how to track down a deep problem, going through all of the steps required to figure out where it was coming from. That's on top of it being an entertaining view of early computer networking.

LoTR is not something I can recommend. When I read it, it was a miserable trek, and I read obsessively. It was a book written by somebody who cares more about the language then they do they story, and it shows. That's not necessarily bad, but unless you share that point of view, I'd give it a miss. Anyways, in the same vein as Ghost in the Wires, I recommend The Cuckoo's Egg and Exploding the phone, which are both fantastic.

> You might also be interested in stories which are based on non-fiction, but are written in a story telling kind of way, greatly adding to suspense. In that category I read the books Ghost in the Wires by Kevin Mitnick and Kingpin by Kevin Poulsen [1]. If you're interested in following a suspenseful hacker story I can recommend them both. Another excellent book along those lines is "The Cuckoos Egg" by Clifford Stoll. (And he's awesome person too.)

I am just on the final few pages of The Cuckoo's Egg, and was planning on finishing it tonight. I too would say that it is a fantastically written page-turner, and it has taught me a lot about the old-school networking scene. How do the other two books you mentioned compare?

I re-read The Cuckoo's Egg every couple of years, it is a fantastic book.

"Mr Penumbra's 24 hour bookstore" - Robin Sloan (a brilliant mix of history, mystery, humour and technology) "The Cuckoo's Egg" - Clifford Stoll (it really is as good as they always say ;-) ) "Winnie the Pooh" - A.A. Milne (delightful, not only for children) "Sofie's World" - Jostein Gaarder (a novel about the history of philosophy) several Discworld novels - Terry Pratchett (a series that manages to satirize fantasy and real life at the same time) ... as well as a few others, but those were the best.

Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive. The Cukoo's Egg is good as well.

Here's a few I've really liked that have a broader subject matter than only what you asked for. I figure that if you like to read you'd like these books. --- NON-FICTION --- Darkness Visible A Mathemematician's Apology Omnivore's Dilemma Fermat's Enigma The Code Book Born to Run Judgement of Paris Siddhartha Killing Pablo The Victorian Internet Lone Survivor I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman Papillon Into Thin Air Born on a Blue Day Touching the Void Got Fight The Conquest of Happiness --- FICTION --- Switch Bitch Lost Horizon The Cuckoo's Egg The Simlarillion The Time Traveler's Wife The Alchemist The Count of Monte Cristo A Canticle for Leibowitz Neverwhere My Uncle Oswald Stories of Your Life and Others Invisible Cities Life of Pi Atlas Shrugged --- WALL STREET / FINANCE --- When Genius Failed Liar's Poker Buffett (Lowenstein) Bull! Black-Scholes and Beyond (textbook) Fixed Income Securities (textbook) The Road to Serfdom The Smartest Guys in the Room Fortune's Formula The Fourth Turning Inside the House of Money --- ENTREPRENEURSHIP / COMPUTERS (non-textbook) --- Masters of Doom It's Not About the Bike Dot. Bomb Founders at Work The PayPal Wars…

I vote up this book - especially for sysadmins.

LOVED this book! I wouldn't consider myself a reader, but I literally could not put it down once I started.

The Cuckoo's Egg: a true crime hacker espionage thriller.