March 01, 2001, 2:11 PM — I was rearranging the bookshelves in my office recently and was taken aback by the number of books I have. A quick count yielded well over a hundred volumes — and that was just the books on my shelves. I have quite a few more boxed up in storage. Have I read them all? You bet. Are they all page-turners, copious compendiums of geek wisdom? Absolutely not. Some of them are real stinkers.
Once I realized how many books I had — and how much money I've spent — I thought it would be interesting to make a list of my favorites. I've relied heavily on my library during my 15 years in information technology, and have found myself referring to the same books time and time again. Some of my choices will be obvious to you; others are a bit more esoteric. You may disagree with some of my selections, and that's fine by me. I'm interested in your opinions, so if you think I've really missed the mark, or if you have a favorite book of your own, send me an email. I'll post your comments in the ITworld.com Enterprise Networking forum.
Currier's Top Ten Information Technology Books
10. Algorithms
Robert Sedgewick
Addison-Wesley, 1983
It might seem strange to have a book on algorithms on a list of information technology books. After all, we're not woolly-haired computer scientists, we're technogeeks, right? Think again. Sedgewick's book provides a solid foundation in algorithms: computer-based methods for solving problems. If you can make it through this book, you'll have a good understanding of the mathematics behind most technology we use today. This is not an easy read, but it's well worth slogging through.
9. Casting the Net
Peter H. Salus
Addison-Wesley, 1995
Anyone working in the information technology field should have a good understanding of the Internet's history. Casting the Net is a detailed study of the growth of the Internet, from its beginnings in 1968 as four BBN nodes to late 1994. Like Algorithms, Casting the Net can be a bit hard to take at times — it is written in a semiacademic style and makes frequent references to Request For Comments and interoffice correspondence. But despite those drawbacks, the book is a treasure trove of documentation and history. Vint Cerf's "Requiem for the ARPANET" and Len Kleinrock's poems are worth the price of the book.
8. The Magic Garden Explained
Berny Goodheart & James Cox
Prentice Hall, 1994
If you've ever wondered what the internals of the Unix System V kernel look like, this book's for you. The Magic Garden Explained gives readers a detailed look at the kernel's structure, including memory management, filesystem management, process control, and streams. Of all the books on my list, this volume is probably the most difficult to read. You won't make it through The Magic Garden in one sitting. But if you've ever asked yourself "Why on earth did they design this feature this way?", you'll probably find the answer buried somewhere in the 664 pages of this book.
7. The Cathedral & the Bazaar
Eric S. Raymond
O'Reilly, 1999
If you've been involved with Linux, you've almost certainly heard of Eric Raymond's manifesto, The Cathedral & the Bazaar. Distributed on the Internet, Raymond's seminal document changed the way we think about software project management. Traditional project management relies heavily on centralized control and dictatorial management styles. The open source movement has shown that those techniques aren't the only ones that work, and that a loosely organized cabal of developers, connected by the Internet, can outprogram, outmanage, and outengineer the bloated bureaucracies of the world. If one book could be said to have kick-started the open source movement, this is it.
6. Unix Systems Administration Handbook (all editions)
Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder, and Scott Seebass
Prentice Hall, 1989
Tired of reading technical manuals? Looking for a book that shows you how to do it, instead of telling you about it? The Unix Systems Administration Handbook distills thousands of bits of useful system administration knowledge into a single easy-to-read, 593-page book. By far my most-used sysadmin guide, the Unix Systems Administration Handbook covers important topics like booting a system, controlling processes, adding printers, configuring networking, adding a disk, mail, network news, and much, much more. If you can't find what you're looking for in this book, you probably don't need to know about it. And I really like the cartoons.
5. Network Intrusion Detection (first edition)
Stephen Northcutt
New Riders, 1999
