Books on Extralogical

Revolution in The Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made is, more or less, Andy Hertzfeld’s account of the making of the Macintosh. Hertzfeld was one of the designers of the original Mac, and this is a deeply personal account of the creation of a computer that changed the world. There are a couple of contributions from other members of the team, but this is clearly Hertzfeld’s book.

The stories are the same ones we've been reading for years on Folklore, beautifully presented in a hardback format with scores of photographs, screenshots and hand-written notes. The photos available online really don’t do the book justice; some might balk at paying for a physical copy when the material is all available online, but there’s no question in my mind that it’s worth it.

Folklore’s signature style—an interwoven network of anecdotes—is carried over into the book. Sans hyperlinks, this isn’t quite as effective in print as on the web, with the stories appearing in a vague approximation of chronological order.