One of the nice things about online reviews is that, by tracking them back, you can discover new and interesting blogs. The latest in my list is The Enlightened Economist, where Diane Coyle reviews a prodigious range and number of books. Here is an excerpt from her review of The Computer Boys.

This interesting social history of computer programming, The Computer Boys Take Over by Nathan Ensmenger, is essentially a story of the struggle for power inside corporations. As I noted in my pre-view of the book, programming was initially thought of as a rather lowly support function, and it took some time for the designers of the massive early computers to realise that writing software was going to be a key function. When they did, out went the women programmers who were rather prominent in those early days (although some, such as Admiral Grace Hopper, remained influential), and in came the ‘boys’.

Reading The Enlightened Economist reminds me how many good books there are for me to read (and how few of these I am actually able to get around to — even as a professional academic). An impressive blog.

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