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The book published in 1980s covers the early years of hacking from 1958 to 1983. The book is divided into 4 parts:

1. True Hackers: The first known hackers at MIT AI Lab who played with the rudimentary hardware of the time and coded on punch cards. Includes Marvin Minsky, Greenblatt, Samson, Steve Russell, Stew Nelson and others. Except for Minsky, I hadn't even heard the other names before. The significant creations of this era include the Hacker Ethic, Lisp, Spacewar and LIFE.

2. Hardware Hackers: Soon after, a hardware hacking community started on the West Coast around the Homebrew Computer Club. Familiar names start appearing from this period. Steve "The Wiz" Wozniak's brilliant hardware designs for Apple and Bill Gates' ALTAIR BASIC catch the limelight. In this period, Apple grows from a garage venture to a multi-million dollar company which brings computing into homes.

3. Game Hackers: After home computers go mainstream starts the craze of computer games. Sierra On-Line and Brøderbund are the main companies of this time (remember that this is way before Doom and its progeny appeared).

4. The Last Of The True Hackers: Mostly centers around RMS who rues how the Hacker Ethic which started at MIT got lost in all the commercialization of computers. Since the book was published in 1984, it closes with this as the end of hacking. Little did the author know about what was to follow once the Internet became accessible!

The book is well researched and detailed. It can get a bit verbose though. There is so much computer history I hadn't even heard about that it was worth reading just for that. Though the book is completely non-fictional, the narration reads like a suspense novel, so it's not boring at all. Chapters 1 and 2 of the book are available under Project Gutenberg. Recommended reading.

This is Dan Brown's first fictional work. The story involves the ultra secret NSA and its cryptographic department. The NSA has built a 3 million processor computer named TRANSLTR which can crack any ciphertext by means of brute force. But, it is one day challenged with a ciphertext that it can't crack. Also, the creator of the new encryption algorithm named Digital Fortress threatens to go public with this algo if NSA doesn't reveal to the world that it has been snooping on the world's information using TRANSLTR. But, there is more to it. There is a chance of USA's biggest secrets being revealed to the world.

Compared to The Da Vinci Code, Digital Fortress is quite amateurish, especially the former half. The main protagonist is a female cryptographer who is in love and has a fabulous figure to boot. The book rests on cryptography, so the author tries to explain every single crypto jargon in layman terms. This read quite funny to me in most cases. Thankfully, by the the time I hit the latter parts, the book was a nail biting page turner with Brown throwing up twist after twist. In parts of the book the EFF and the right to information show up. An enjoyable read.

My friend who does practises meditation regularly handed me this book from his collection when I asked him for advice. I read through the book while I was attending meditation classes at university in the last few weeks. Turning The Mind Into An Ally is written by Sakyong Mipham, a Tibetan Buddhist lama. The book is aimed at beginners to meditation, so was perfect for me. The prose flows like a graceful and simple brook going from the nature of the mind, to getting started on meditation, to the problems faced during meditation and finally to the different objects that one can place the mind on during meditation. The book is a breezy read, mainly because the author takes care not to get heavy in the details and peppers every other page with analogies from real life. Buddhism (the religion) aspects are present a bit in the beginning and towards the end, but the book for the most part is free of religion. The book ends with some appendices which have practical tips for meditation. I found the book quite useful to go along with my meditation classes. I will have to get back to the book sometime in the future again since I couldn't really take away a lot of the latter part of the book.

Lance Armstrong's autobiography It's Not About The Bike: My Journey Back To Life is co-authored by him and sports writer Sally Jenkins. I'd been meaning to read this book since I started running last year. It follows his life from his childhood with his divorced mother, his belligerent early successes at cycling, his diagnosis of testicular cancer, his cancer treatment, the fight back to life and finally his methodical training and success at Tour de France. Lance makes no bones about the fact that since he was born he only had a mom and she was solely responsible for his early success. In his early 20s he was a very good cyclist, but only at short races. Due to his short temper he had no chance at winning a multi-day multi-stage race like Tour de France. Then he's diagnosed with testicular cancer which quickly metastasizes to his brain and lungs. He undergoes brain surgery to remove the cancerous tumours in his brain, surgery similarly for lungs and loses one of his testicles. After that comes months of chemotherapy which pushes him to the edge of his life. His doctors give him a 3% chance of survival, but he wins those odds. Back clean from cancer, he skips the other races and trains methodically for the Tour de France, the most gruelling endurance event on this planet. Though dogged by rumourmongers about doping, he wins the 1999 Tour de France in spectacular fashion. The first ever win by an American on an all-American team in this European dominated event. The book ends with the birth of his son Luke and his followup 2000 win. He would later go on to win every Tour de France† from 1999 to 2005, making him the event's most successful cyclist ever. His Lance Armstrong Foundation has also become very popular in raising awareness about cancer and funds for cancer research through its yellow wristband.

The book is a Tour de Force of a read (forgive the pun)! It's very light and quick. Lance goes into detail on his fight over cancer and the 1999 TdF. He insists to the reader that it was his win over cancer that gave him a new perspective on life and that was more important than the wins that came after. The book is (as you can assume) very inspirational. Having taken a bit to running recently, I could understand and empathise with Lance especially when he described how patience and temper is necessary in a long endurance event. In that aspect, endurance events are a metaphor for life (and that's what most people including me feel when running). I can't think of a single reason why anyone shouldn't read this book, please do.