Best of
Geek

1985

Chariots for Apollo:: The Untold Story Behind the Race to the Moon


Charles Pellegrino - 1985
    Then, in 1961, John F. Kennedy challenged America -- and from Long Island to Cape Canaveral, Houston to Huntsville, an army of engineers, scientists, bureaucrats and astronauts were swept up into the effort. Somehow, America would put a man on the moon's surface and bring him back safely before the decade was over. But how?For eight frantic years the engineers would design and redesign, the scientists would argue, and brave men would trust their lives to virtually untested machinery. This dramatic chronicle of the race to the moon takes us behind the scenes of this awesome quest, into the minds of the people whose lives were devoted to it and changed by it, and through the missions themselves -- including the tragedy of Apollo 13. A riveting portrait of ingenuity, determination, and raw human courage, "Chariots for Apollo is the powerful story of how one society came together to reach its goal -- a quarter of a million miles away.

Advanced UNIX Programming


Marc J. Rochkind - 1985
    The first edition of Advanced UNIX Programming is still used and considered to be a must have book on any UNIX programmer's shelf. With this new edition UNIX programmers now have a one-volume, comprehensive, in-depth guide to the essential system-level services provided to them by the UNIX family of operating systems - now including Linux, FreeBSD, and the Mac OS X kernel (Darwin). All UNIX application programs, regardless of what language they are written in, run on top of these services, so mastering them is essential for successful UNIX programming. And, with a movement towards open-source systems, programmers will appreciate the book's emphasis on portability.

Art & Life of Georgia O'Keeffe


Georgia O'Keeffe - 1985
    Jan Castro's revealing study of O'Keeffe, which relies in part on interviews with the artist and excerpts from her letters, profiles her artistic development, her place in the ever-changing art world, and her rich legacy. With reproductions of photographs of the artist and more than 100 paintings.