
The Soul of a New Machine
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Narrated by:
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Ben Sullivan
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By:
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Tracy Kidder
About this listen
Computers have changed since 1981, when Tracy Kidder memorably recorded the drama, comedy, and excitement of one company's efforts to bring a new microcomputer to market. What has not changed is the feverish pace of the high-tech industry, the go-for-broke approach to business that has caused so many computer companies to win big (or go belly up), and the cult of pursuing mind-bending technological innovations. The Soul of a New Machine is an essential chapter in the history of the machine that revolutionized the world in the 20th century.
©2011 Tracy Kidder (P)2016 Hachette AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
Supported by meticulous research and told in a lively, accessible voice, Ten Tomatoes That Changed the World seamlessly weaves travel, history, humor, and a little adventure (and misadventure) to follow the tomato's trail through history. A fascinating story complete with heroes, con artists, conquistadors, and—no surprise—the Mafia, this book is a mouth-watering, informative, and entertaining guide to the food that has captured our hearts for generations.
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Interesting history of tomatoes
- By Amazon Customer on 03-17-25
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Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
- 25th Anniversary Edition
- By: Steven Levy
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 20 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Steven Levy's classic book traces the exploits of the computer revolution's original hackers - those brilliant and eccentric nerds from the late 1950s through the early '80s who took risks, bent the rules, and pushed the world in a radical new direction. With updated material from noteworthy hackers such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Stallman, and Steve Wozniak, Hackers is a fascinating story that begins in early computer research labs and leads to the first home computers.
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Remember Why You Got Into Computing
- By Dan Collins on 07-01-16
By: Steven Levy
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A Stone Is Most Precious Where It Belongs
- A Memoir of Uyghur Exile, Hope, and Survival
- By: Gulchehra Hoja
- Narrated by: Sarah Suzuk
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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In February 2018, twenty-four members of Gulchehra Hoja's family disappeared overnight. Her crime – and thus that of her family – was her award-winning investigations on the plight of her people, the Uyghurs, whose existence and culture is being systematically destroyed by the Chinese government. A Stone is Most Precious Where it Belongs is Gulchehra’s stunning memoir, taking us into the everyday world of life under Chinese rule in East Turkestan (more formally as the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of China), from her idyllic childhood to its modern nightmare.
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Beautiful
- By Genniphur on 08-14-23
By: Gulchehra Hoja
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The Secret War
- Spies, Ciphers, and Guerrillas, 1939-1945
- By: Max Hastings
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 30 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Spies, codes, and guerrillas played unprecedentedly critical roles in the Second World War, exploited by every nation in the struggle to gain secret knowledge of its foes, and to sow havoc behind the fronts. In The Secret War, Max Hastings presents a worldwide cast of characters and some extraordinary sagas of intelligence and resistance, to create a new perspective on the greatest conflict in history.
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Better read than listened to
- By B. In -t Veld on 03-25-17
By: Max Hastings
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Master of None
- How a Jack-of-All-Trades Can Still Reach the Top
- By: Clifford Hudson
- Narrated by: Clifford Hudson
- Length: 5 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Most people don't need to be experts in their field. Yes, the successful know more than the average person about a particular topic, and they often possess a better-than-average ability with a particular skill set; but not everyone who is successful is an expert, he makes clear. And yet we continue to deeply value the expertise ideal. In Master of None, Hudson turns expertise on its head and shows that by embracing variety and becoming more versatile, anyone can succeed and become more open to different opportunities in life.
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Not great, not bad
- By Brian Sachetta on 01-27-21
By: Clifford Hudson
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Accountable
- The Rise of Citizen Capitalism
- By: Michael O'Leary, Warren Valdmanis
- Narrated by: Joe Knezevich
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Corporations are broken, reflecting no purpose deeper than profit. But the tools we are relying on to fix them - corporate social responsibility, divestment, impact investing, and government control - risk making our problems worse. With lively storytelling and careful analysis, O’Leary and Valdmanis cut through the tired dogma of current economic thinking to reveal a hopeful truth: If we can make our corporations accountable to a deeper purpose, we can make capitalism both prosperous and good.
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mandatory reading
- By joseph on 02-01-21
By: Michael O'Leary, and others
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On the Psychology of Military Incompetence
- By: Norman F. Dixon
- Narrated by: James Langton
- Length: 17 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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The Crimea, the Boer War, the Somme, Tobruk, Pearl Harbor, the Bay of Pigs: these are just some of the milestones in a century of military incompetence, of costly mishaps and tragic blunders. Are these simple accidents—as the "bloody fool" theory has it—or are they inevitable? The psychologist Norman F. Dixon argues that there is a pattern to inept generalship, and locates this pattern within the very act of creating armies in the first place, which in his view produces a levelling down of human capability that encourages the mediocre and limits the gifted.
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Great book. Should be read by Secretary of Defense!
- By Amazon Customer on 08-04-24
By: Norman F. Dixon
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The Spy Who Knew Too Much
- An Ex-CIA Officer’s Quest Through a Legacy of Betrayal
- By: Howard Blum
- Narrated by: Steve Hendrickson
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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On a sunlit morning in September 1978, a sloop drifts aimlessly across the Chesapeake Bay. The cabin reveals signs of a struggle, and “classified” documents, live 9 mm cartridges, and a top-secret “burst” satellite communications transmitter are discovered aboard. But where is the boat’s owner, former CIA officer John Paisley? One man may hold the key to finding out. Tennent “Pete” Bagley was once a rising star in America’s spy aristocracy, and many expected he’d eventually become CIA director.
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The, too long, story of an obsession
- By Tony on 10-30-22
By: Howard Blum
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This Idea Is Brilliant
- Lost, Overlooked, and Underappreciated Scientific Concepts Everyone Should Know
- By: John Brockman
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Charles Constant
- Length: 16 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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As science informs public policy, decision making, and so many aspects of our everyday lives, a scientifically literate society is crucial. In that spirit, Edge.org publisher and author of Know This, John Brockman, asks 206 of the world's most brilliant minds the 2017 Edge Question: What scientific term or concept ought to be more widely known?
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Condensed Brilliance in Digestable Chunks
- By Andrew on 02-15-18
By: John Brockman
It is hard to extrapolate any useful lessons from this account. I liked it, but I would have LOVED if it had posited how this story could be used to guide new development or teams. That would have been more compelling.
About one machine
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Great read in 2022
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The thing is, what it really describes is typical politics of just about any electronics/software development company. The management, the tyrants, the superstars, the lackeys. Truly this describes most of the companies and project teams I have worked on. So you might interpret this as being near and dear, or to familiar to be interesting.
I recognize this was written years ago, but many of the technical concepts and innovations described weren't really that revolutionary and were kind of typical. Moral of the story, data general wasn't really all that revolutionary or innovative..
I can see the interest in the book, but maybe it is a bit too removed from current technology to be that interesting anymore.
What I didn't like was the narrator. Just awful, butchering the pronunciation of engineering and technology terms continually to the point of distraction and cringe.
Wanting to read for years, but disappointed
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Gives a close up feel of a computers genesis
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Fascinating!
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I enjoyed getting a view into the world of computer hardware.
The narrator did a great job and kept me interested and held my attention.
If you're at all interested in technology or computers, this should be on your reading list.
Entertaining listen
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Interesting deep dive into computer entrepreneurship with
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Great enjoying it on Audible. I listen to an Audible book every morning while taking a walk through my neighborhood.
I read this book years ago ..
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We grew the technology of our day as awesome.
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Wonderful - and still accurate today
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