Hackers

Hackers
Steven Levy
Anchor/Doubleday 1984
ISBN 0-385-19195-2

Levy's book is at its best in describing the early MIT hackers at the
Model Railroad Club and the early days of the microcomputer
revolution.  He never understood UNIX or the networks, though, and his
enshrinement of Richard Stallman as "the last true hacker" turns out
(thankfully) to have been quite misleading.  Numerous minor factual
errors also mar the text; for example, Levy's claim that the original
Jargon File derived from the TMRC Dictionary (the File originated at
Stanford and was brought to MIT in 1976; the co-authors of the first
edition had never seen the dictionary in question).  There are also
numerous misspellings in the book that inflame the passions of
old-timers; as Dan Murphy, the author of TECO, once said: "You would
have thought he'd take the trouble to spell the name of a winning
editor right."  Nevertheless, this remains a useful and stimulating
book that captures the feel of several important hackish subcultures.