The Soul of a New Machine

by

293 pages

English language

Published July 31, 2010

ISBN:
978-0-316-49197-6
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Goodreads:
7090

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5 stars (1 review)

The Soul of a New Machine is a non-fiction book written by Tracy Kidder and published in 1981. It chronicles the experiences of a computer engineering team racing to design a next-generation computer at a blistering pace under tremendous pressure. The machine was launched in 1980 as the Data General Eclipse MV/8000.The book, whose author was described by the New York Times as having "elevated it to a high level of narrative art" is "about real people working on a real computer for a real company," and it won the 1982 National Book Award for Nonfiction and a Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction.

3 editions

reviewed The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder

The Soul of an (Not So) New Machine

5 stars

Tracy Kidder recounts the uber-enjoyable events of an engineering team racing to build a microcomputer, making it feel like you're the geeked intern spectating at all the engineers in wonder and delight. The personalities, the hardware, the business, the goofs and the gaffes pull you in and never really lets go. Now, forty years later, the book is old and the technology is practically archaic, however, nothing seems to have really changed.