Bill Bewley: Like some of the other reviewers, I worked on the Star program in El Segundo during the years covered by this book. I wasn’t a programmer, but I worked with most of them. I agree that the book captures the feel of the place. It brought back great memories: the A&E building, the Alto with the big disk you had to carry around, lunches at El Tarasco, trips to Palo Alto, the bean bag chairs, Zot’s, and many good friends. Not so great memories are the slowness of the Star software and the general feeling that Xerox didn’t know what to do with the product.

The book is well written, and despite a few technical bits of interest to software people, the general audience will find it a good read.