The Chip
How Two Americans Invented the Microchip and Launched a Revolution
Written by T.R. Reid

Format: Trade Paperback, 320 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
On Sale: October 9, 2001
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-375-75828-7 (0-375-75828-3)

Barely fifty years ago a computer was a gargantuan, vastly expensive thing that only a handful of scientists had ever seen. The world’s brightest engineers were stymied in their quest to make these machines small and affordable until the solution finally came from two ingenious young Americans. Jack Kilby and Robert... Read more >

The New Digital Age
Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business
Written by Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen

Format: Hardcover, 336 pages
Publisher: Knopf
On Sale: April 23, 2013
Price: $26.95
ISBN: 978-0-307-95713-9 (0-307-95713-6)

In an unparalleled collaboration, two leading global thinkers in technology and foreign affairs give us their widely anticipated, transformational vision of the future: a world where everyone is connected—a world full of challenges and benefits that are ours to meet and to harness.

Eric Schmidt is one of Silicon Valley’s great leaders... Read more >

The Man Who Invented the Computer
The Biography of John Atanasoff, Digital Pioneer
Written by Jane Smiley

Format: Hardcover, 256 pages
Publisher: Doubleday
On Sale: October 19, 2010
Price: $25.95
ISBN: 978-0-385-52713-2 (0-385-52713-6)

One night in the late 1930s, in a bar on the Illinois–Iowa border, John Vincent Atanasoff, a professor of physics at Iowa State University, after a frustrating day performing tedious mathematical calculations in his lab, hit on the idea that the binary number system and electronic switches, combined with an array... Read more >

Tomorrow Now
Envisioning the Next 50 Years
Written by Bruce Sterling

Format: Trade Paperback, 368 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
On Sale: December 23, 2003
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-8129-6976-4 (0-8129-6976-6)

“Nobody knows better than Bruce Sterling how thin the membrane between science fiction and real life has become, a state he correctly depicts as both thrilling and terrifying in this frisky, literate, clear-eyed sketch of the next half-century. Like all of the most interesting futurists, Sterling isn’t just talking about machines... Read more >

Turing and the Computer
The Big Idea
Written by Paul Strathern

Format: Trade Paperback, 112 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: April 20, 1999
Price: $9.95
ISBN: 978-0-385-49243-0 (0-385-49243-X)

A clear and accessible explanation of the genesis of the computer, and a fascinating look at the man who helped develop it, only to be forgotten by the world he had transformed.

The computer has revolutionized the modern age of communication, touching every part of modern life.  Without a doubt, the development of... Read more >

Why Things Bite Back
Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences
Written by Edward Tenner

Format: Trade Paperback, 448 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: September 2, 1997
Price: $18.95
ISBN: 978-0-679-74756-7 (0-679-74756-7)

In this perceptive and provocative look at everything from computer software that requires faster processors and more support staff to antibiotics that breed resistant strains of bacteria, Edward Tenner offers a virtual encyclopedia of what he calls "revenge effects"--the unintended consequences of the mechanical, chemical, biological, and medical forms of ingenuity... Read more >

Arguing A.I.
The Battle for Twenty-first-Century Science
Written by Sam Williams

Format: Trade Paperback, 128 pages
Publisher: AtRandom
On Sale: January 22, 2002
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9180-2 (0-8129-9180-X)

Few scientific topics since the theory of biological evolution have inspired as much controversy as artificial intelligence has. Even now, fifty years after the term first made its appearance in academic journals, many philosophers and more than a few prominent scientists and software programmers dismiss the pursuit of thinking machines as... Read more >

The Master Switch
The Rise and Fall of Information Empires
Written by Tim Wu

Format: Trade Paperback, 384 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: November 29, 2011
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-0-307-39099-8 (0-307-39099-3)

A New Yorker and Fortune Best Book of the Year

It is easy to forget that every development in the history of the American information industry—from the telephone to radio to film—once existed in an open and chaotic marketplace inhabited by entrepreneurs and utopians, just as the Internet does today. Each of... Read more >

The Master Switch
The Rise and Fall of Information Empires
Written by Tim Wu

Format: Hardcover, 384 pages
Publisher: Knopf
On Sale: November 2, 2010
Price: $28.95
ISBN: 978-0-307-26993-5 (0-307-26993-0)

A secret history of the industrial wars behind the rise and fall of the twentieth century’s great information empires—Hollywood, the broadcast networks, and AT&T—asking one big question: Could history repeat itself, with one giant entity taking control of American information?

Most consider the Internet Age to be a moment of unprecedented freedom... Read more >