Eric Dahl / Inside Tech's "Monster's 50 Books Every Geek Should Read"

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Ever find out one of your friends hasn’t read “Neuromancer” or doesn’t know what a Babelfish is or why it’s important to keep a towel handy at all times? Did you have that brief moment where you thought, “Man, it’s like I don’t even know you?”

If you’re gonna work in tech, write code, or just spend way too much time on Engadget, Lifehacker, and BoingBoing, there’s a certain amount of reading that goes with the territory. And I’m not just talking about O’Reilly books here. Discovering “Snow Crash” or geeking out on crypto history teaches us part of the language we all share in tech. (Plus, it’s just really fun.)

  1. 1.
    Snow Crash
    by Neal Stephenson
  2. 2.
    Neuromancer
    by William Gibson
  3. 3.
    I, Robot
    by Isaac Asimov
  4. 4.
    ?
    The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
    by D. Adams
  5. 5.
    ?
    Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
    by Philip K. Dick
  6. 6.
    Ender's Game
    by Orson Scott Card
  7. 7.
    The Time Machine (Penguin Classics)
    by H.G. Wells
  8. 8.
    Microserfs
    by Douglas Coupland
  9. 9.
    Flatland
    by Edwin Abbott Abbott
  10. 10.
    1984
    by George Orwell
  11. 11.
    Brave New World
    by Aldous Huxley
  12. 12.
  14. 14.
  15. 15.
    The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
    by Edward R. Tufte
  17. 17.
    The Non-Designer's Design Book
    by Robin Williams
  18. 18.
    Tog on Interface
    by Bruce Tognazzini
  19. 19.
    User Interface Design for Programmers
    by Joel Spolsky
  21. 21.
    The Soul of A New Machine
    by Tracy Kidder
  22. 22.
    Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet
    by Katie Hafner
  23. 23.
    Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age
    by Michael A. Hiltzik
  28. 28.
    Cryptonomicon
    by Neal Stephenson
  30. 30.
    The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master
    by Andrew Hunt
  38. 38.
  39. 39.
    On Intelligence
    by Jeff Hawkins
  40. 40.
    In the Beginning...was the Command Line
    by Neal Stephenson
  41. 41.
    Code: And Other Laws of Cyberspace, Version 2.0
    by Lawrence Lessig
  42. 42.
    The Wisdom of Crowds
    by James Surowiecki
  43. 43.
    The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology
    by Ray Kurzweil
  44. 44.
    Goedel, Escher, Bach: The Eternal Golden Braid
    by Douglas Hofstadter
  45. 45.
    Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious
    by Gerd Gigerenzer
  46. 46.
    A Brief History of Time
    by Stephen Hawking
  47. 47.
    ?
    hackers and painters
    by paul graham
  49. 49.
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Created by smitster on Dec 10, 2009.
 

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