A Reading Guide

The books on this list have made an impact on one or more CS faculty members or graduate students, who recommend them to you.  These aren't textbooks.  They don't correspond to any courses you will take at UT, although some of the concepts do occur in courses.  Reading them will give you a different way to think about computing.  We have listed the books without comments, but each title is a link to the book on Amazon, where you can read descriptions and reviews.

History and the People Who Made It

John von Neumann and the Origins of Modern Computing by William Aspray
Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges
Out of their Minds: The Lives and Discoveries of 15 Great Computer Scientists by Dennis Shasha, Cathy Lazere
A Quarter Century of UNIX by Peter H. Salus
Casting the Net: From ARPANET to INTERNET and Beyond by Peter H. Salus
The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography by Simon Singh
The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal by M. Mitchell Waldrop

Computing and the Science of Reasoning

The Universal Computer: The Road from Leibniz to Turing by Martin Davis
Darwin Among The Machines: The Evolution Of Global Intelligence by George B. Dyson
Computers Ltd: What They Really Can't Do by David Harel
Algorithmics: The Spirit of Computing by David Harel
Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter
Godel's Proof by Ernest Nagel
The Sciences of the Artificial by Herbert A. Simon

Computing: The Industry, A Career (and What Is It Like Being a Scientist?)

The Soul Of A New Machine by Tracy Kidder
Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition, and Still Can't Get a Date by Robert X. Cringely
Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet by Katie Hafner
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character) by Richard P. Feynman, Ralph Leighton, Edward Hutchings (Editor)
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy
Go To: The Story of the Math Majors, Bridge Players, Engineers, Chess Wizards, Maverick Scientists and Iconoclasts--The Programmers Who Created the Software Revolution by Steve Lohr
Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing by Jane Margolis, Allan Fisher
Nerds 2.0.1 by Stephen Segaller
The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage by Clifford Stoll
The Psychology of Computer Programming: Silver Anniversary Edition by Gerald M. Weinberg

Computers, Our Society, and the Future

Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind by Hans Moravec
Computer-Related Risks by Peter G. Neumann
The Sachertorte Algorithm by John Shore