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Fire in the Valley, Third Edition

This is the first edition of this book to be published by Pragmatic Bookshelf, which I believe is an excellent fit as a company for the book’s content. The second edition was published back in 2000 by a publisher who specializes these days in a different sort of content. Plus, I love The Pragmatic Programmers series by Pragmatic Bookshelf and this history contained here belongs in this series. Good move for both the authors and the publisher.

Fire in the Valley, Third Edition is subtitled The Birth and Death of the Personal Computer, and for good reason. The book is a history of the types of computers that people bring into their homes, starting at the very beginning when this was just a dream for a few stalwart hobbyists willing to build their own computers. It continues through the usual suspects like MITS and Apple all the way to the present day when computing power has been grafted in to so many different devices that the meaningfulness of having “my own computer” isn’t quite the same as it once was.

The book covers not only historic events and figures, but also issues and philosophies that had an impact of the birth, growth, life, and death of many companies along the way. It also includes a ton of first-hand accounts from key players that make the story rich, interesting, and fun to read.

While this is being sold quite rightly as a history book, perhaps it should receive more fanfare as a chronology of a revolution, of a sweeping cultural shift. I lived through much of the era described in the book (I bought my first computer in 1981) and can easily remember a time when there were only three or four people in my school who had a computer at home, when there was no computer lab, or when the first computer labs were created and filled with Commodore PET computers that had no software other than an operating system, so there was nothing for students to do with or on them. Society is indeed different, and this book describes integral and foundational reasons why and how that change occurred. If this sounds interesting to you, this book is easily the best one I have encountered on the topic. That was true of the previous edition, and is even more true today with the third edition. Pick it up!

Disclosure: I was given my copy of this book by the publisher as a review copy. See also: Are All Book Reviews Positive?