If you're interested in getting to the belly of the beast, in this case, the finger-nail crud of unification, look to Katie's absolutely bottom-line insights into the east German perspective. The house is still there, hard by the two-taxi stand as you come across the bridge, ironically just down the wooded lane from where they signed the Potsdam Agreement, and, in its crumbling, grafitti-stained magnificence, it can be seen, if you wish, as some sort of symbol, of what's gone wrong, and what's gone right. with the "new" Germany. The book tells a wonderful tale of brick and mortar and the dreams and ambition it contained. Rarely does the door to a complex turning open so joyously and so widely. Read it and learn how it is.

Having lived in Germany before, during and after the wall went down,
The House At The Bridge encapsulizes succinctly the emotions of change
that I, and others, saw and felt during Germany's paradigm shift of
politics and society. This story isn't just about a house, but of
families and a country in transition. Ms. Hafner cleverly uses the
house as a common thread to tell the history behind the house's
inhabitants and the political changes that effected them. The
comparisons between (former) East and West Germany are poignant and
real. Any history lover, travel buff or architect(professional or
amateur) will be pleasantly surprised by the story this house tells.

I'm a software engineer who has recently become interested in the history of computing. I thought this book was well written. The personalities of the primary players in the invention of the computer network are brought to life. It's interesting to see how little has changed with programmer personalities since the early days. The development of the ARPAnet is covered in good detail. The chapters dealing with the subsequent evolution of the ARPAnet into the Internet and the growth of the Internet are less detailed but still interesting. It had the right blend of technical detail and human detail to make me happy, but I suspect less technical people might find parts of it boring.

This book gives you the complete story behind the conception and birth of the internet. The story focuses on the work done by BBN to pioneer and develop all of the protocols and designs that are the internet. The book does a good job of laying the foundation of where the state of computing was when these initial developments were being made and what outside social and economic trends effected and encouraged the internet's development. The authors do a very good job of focusing on the personalities, anecdotes and larger issues without getting bogged down in minutiae. At 265 pages, the book is packed and makes for a very quick read. The writing style of Ms. Hafner and Mr. Lyon is outstanding, which greatly increases the quality of the book.

There are some very interesting aspects of the development that are related. I was very interested in the origins of BBN, their background in acoustics, and the zeal with which they pursued the original DARPA contract. Of equal interest was the method in which the teams were managed, and the way that the development was not pursued with large teams and brute force, but rather with smaller teams that were headed by the best possible people and given all of the resources that they needed. The creation of the internet is an awe-inspiring event, and the text offers several subtle management lessons that are too important to be overlooked. The book also does a splendid job of showing some of the theory that was used in the development of the necessary software and how the developers did such a good job of bridging theory and practical engineering development. In this light the book does a much better job discussing theory than two other recent books on the history of the Computer, "Engines of the Mind" by Shurkin and "Computer" by Campbell-Kelly and Aspray. These are just some of the interesting stories told, the whole text is packed cover to cover with similar stories.

I highly recommend this book.

This is one of the best books on the history of the Internet I have found. It doesn't make incredibly grandiose and silly statements and it is written in a very clear, straightforward manner. Focusing largely on the early days of the Internet, especially BBN's role in creating the original ARPANET, this book is a pleasant blend of character portraits and technical material, though it is somewhat light on the technical apsects. Still it spent less time than other computer history books on hiring and firing and other rather boring junk.

My only gripe with this book is that it peters out right about 1990 and flies over the modern Internet with too little detail. Perhaps that story is best told in a follow-up book.

I highly recommend it.

I liked this book. I've been there on well.com now and then, and it's true that the site was influential in forming the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other key initiatives in protecting the freedoms of the 'net. But the book is cool because even though Hafner says the Well is historic and unique, it's more like a very strong example of something we've all seen.

There's a soap opera pleasure to the conflicts in the book.

The Well's traditional attention to "process" can get annoying, but over all it's not so bad that any sanction against a user is heavily debated, unlike on some boards. You'll recognize the personalities and see the problems of trying to attract a wide range of smart outspoken people who can be jerks at times. You've seen this all before somewhere, and not just on the web.

Keeping a group at all cohesive when it is made of hundreds of strong personalities is classic challenge. The book is ultimately more about the problems of being in groups and communities, and of being human.

[Full disclosure: I am a member of the Well and have been for almost seven years as of the publication of this book.]

It's always been difficult for me to describe the Well to my non-Well friends, because there are so few virtual places that even approximate it, and they're even smaller, and practically no one knows what they're like either. "Computer conferencing" is what I say to my friends in business. "On-line community" is what I say to the people I think Might Get It. I also call it "the Peyton Place of cyberspace" and that metaphor (small town where everyone knows everyone else's history of indiscretions FAR TOO WELL) might be the most apt of the three, at least in my own experience.

Like any big amorphous concept, the Well is difficult to write about for a general audience. So Katie chose a story -- with love and friendship and grief and humor and all the other elements that make up a good story -- to carry her narrative. She chose a good one. Of course there are others. But this book (and before it, the WIRED article the book is based upon) comes closer to conveying the essence of the Well than anything else I've ever seen or read.

When the WIRED article was published I gave a copy to my mother, just to help her understand how it was that I had dozens of close friends I had never met. For a reader who wants to understand the astonishing power of true online community, in the light of human nature in all its ornery glory, I can't think of a better introduction.

I finished the book with a sad, sober feeling. Yes, the word "death" absolutely belongs in the title. The book is about life and death. It's one of those little books that appears to be about something concrete and specific, and is in fact evocative of much deeper issues. I was reminded of what I experienced as the sometimes toxic atmosphere on The Well by the posts in the book, and by the accounts of some of the principal players. As well as the beatific spirits who made the whole thing run behind the scenes. The influence of the Farm -- that was new to me -- but it explains a lot.

Will people realize that this is an emotional story, a sad sobering story of dreams fulfilled, frustrated, and failed? That is what got me about it. It contains more pathos than many novels whose goal is to move readers. Going in, I took the subtitle as ironic, like the "Fear and Loathing" title of the gonzo journalist Hunter Thompson, but it is literal and straight. The very first page sets the tone and the book is true to that. The Well wasn't my way to the Internet, but the 17-year arc of the story made me feel my mortality.

The tales in this book are old ones now. Mitnick's escapades continued on to more infamous heights than this book, as the new epilogue explains. Having grown up working with Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) computers, the descriptions of Mitnick's hacking on PDP-11 and VAX systems was like a dark-side of my high school days. Having worked at Radio Shack just after graduating college, I knew a lot of "phreakers" who worshipped the people mentioned in the book.

I teach classes for computer professionals in UNIX. One of the courses is a 2-day class in unix security, and the "Morris worm" is one of the case studies we discuss. We don't go into too much detail in the class on the subject, and I usually recommend this book for those who want to go further.

The other reason I recommend this book to students in my class is the story (in Kevin's section) of Susan Thunder. The concept of "social engineering" is one that transcends computer model, operating system version, etc. Many computer types just don't understand it, in the same way they don't understand office politics. If you fall into this category, or if you have an interest in the social side of hacking/cracking/phreaking, Hafner and Markoff do an excellent job of presenting these concepts.

I read this book last summer and enjoyed it immensely. It's very well-written.

However, having just finished Jonathan Littman's "The Fugitive Game" I have to recommend reading both books to get the full story. Markoff's conflicts-of-interest and questionable journalistic practices aren't apparent from reading just "Cyberpunk." What appears to be a non-fiction account is, in reality, more complicated than that.... You really owe it to yourself to read both sides of the story.

So read this book and enjoy it for what it is -- and then read Littman for another perspective.

After reading so many badly researched, badly written, self-effacing and / or bloated books on the subject of hacking and computer security, at long last here is a book that is well researched and written. It's a real page turner, and IMHO it is absolutely THE book to read on this subject.

Ironically co-author John Markoff has also co-written the absolutely WORST book on the subject, Takedown, with Tetsuo Simomura.