Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age
by Michael A. Hiltzik

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Book Reviews of Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age

Book Review: A definitive history of how we got here
Summary: 5 Stars

Hiltzik really succeeds at telling good stories. He gives a wonderful sense of the characters involved. This is not "you are there" journalism; it's clearly removed from the characters, but he gives you enough detail to give the stories life.

I've seen various treatments of PARC folklore over the years, and Hiltzak has done the best job I've seen yet.

I very much enjoyed his story how MAXC came to be built. Typical of his approach, Hiltzak talks less about the technical details of the project about more about the politics of why building a knock-off PDP-10 clone was such an affront to some in Xerox at the time. Hiltzak clearly spent lots of time talking to not only PARC scientists, but players from all over Xerox.

Hiltzik seems to have taken particular care with the oft-retold tale of the Steve Jobs visit to PARC. Hiltzik notes that none of the accounts fully agrees with each other, but Hiltzik has done his best to come up with the definitive story, and it is an enlightening tale.

Hiltzik's last chapter asks "Did Xerox blow it?" His answer is measured; he notes the important distinction between mistakes that could have been foreseen or prevented at the time (Xerox's delay in moving the laser pprinter to market) from events that were unforeseeable (how quickly lower-cost PCs would take over and leave the Star on the sidelines.)

Hiltzik's book surprised me. It was better than I had expected; *much* better than I remember "Fumbling the Future" to be. If you have any interest in the history of where personal computing came from, check out this book.

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