Tracy Kidder

This book is kind of weird because Kidder just jumps in without providing a lot of context about the book's project. There is no helpful introduction to let the reader know what they are going to get out of this book.

Kidder closely observed the process of bringing a new computer to life at Data General, a company that built computers in the 1970s. DG was known for being a cut-throat rebel on the market. When they saw that their competitors were building a computer with entirely new architecture that was going to be a game-changer, they realized that they needed to come up with something even better, but there was disagreement within the company about how to do it. This book covers the creation of their Eagle computer, which was a renegade project within the company.

The book goes into excruciating detail about various managers' leadership styles, ultimately hailing the project leader West as a kind of behind-the-scenes hero who on the surface seemed to have only superficial involvement but was actually the mastermind behind the whole thing. It delves a lot into the corporate culture, and how employees were expected to devote their lives to the project: there was no work-life balance. Kidder also gives little biographies of a lot of employees, looking at how their personalities helped or hindered their work.

The book also includes excruciating detail about how the Eagle computer was built and how it works. Anyone interested in computer science will find this fascinating... people who are not interested in computer science will find it tedious (I fall somewhere in the middle). There are long chapters about late-night debugging sessions and how engineers solved specific problems.

This book is a useful historical record of a pivotal time in computer science, and the amount of detail is impressive, but I found it a slog to read.… (meer)

This is my first Tracy Kidder read and I just moved to Amherst MA, and have a kid in Northampton MA.

Home Town is a memoir, woven-together stories of several inhabitants of Northampton Massachusetts from the 1950s through late 1990s. The main character is Tommy, a police officer and long time resident, but the story delves into stories of criminals, wealthy eccentrics, Smith College students, and others. It captures the small town feel in general and the Northampton vibe specifically, very very well. It's easy to read, mild, enjoyable. But it is too long. I was pretty tired of the characters by the end and there were portions I think could have been shortened or skipped as they just dragged on, especially in the absence of any significant plot.… (meer)

Tracy Kidder can always tell a story in his writing and we are eventually focused primarily on Tony, an in and out Rough Sleeper who plays such a central roll in Dr. Jim O'Connell's truly incredible work trying to help the homeless in Boston. I kept wondering if maybe, instead of trying to house the homeless in apartments, at least many of them would be better off in a home situaiton....the way some elderly people are now being put in group homes, with someone in charge...kind of like a housemother, with family meals as well as medical issues tended to. Leaving the streets cuts them off from their friends who are experiencing the same street life and apartment isolation becomes impossible. Absolutely no easy answers to problems that arise from so many different situations, but often originate in truly horrific childhoods.… (meer)