Whether this book achieves biblical status as a paradigm of the history of modern computing rests with the reader. However, I can say with confidence that if you are a computing historian, a graduate student with a dissertation to complete, or an industry consultant, A new history of modern computing should be at your right hand during the entire process in which you are engaged.

Doctors Haigh and Ceruzzi have penned a work of inestimable value. And they have done so with elegance, true professionalism, and scholarship. The idea alone of attempting such a venture is frightening given the enormity and difficulty of such a task, and especially given that every phase of computing in the years since 1945 (when the book’s coverage begins) is problematic. Each topic explored is a 20th century hydra; one ideas begets a plethora of additional issues that have to be addressed. Nevertheless, the authors have managed to achieve a coherent and very readable chronology.

To accomplish their task, the authors have chosen to use a thread of continuity through each of their chapters and topics, that is, communications as the glue that provides continuity to the entire book. As a result, media and communications are paramount in each chapter. And the authors emphasize that their history of modern computing is not a history of computer science. The book concentrates on the evolution of computing technology. The use of computing technology is the focus. The authors also state, at the outset, that the text is not about personalities in the field of computing and not about controversies surrounding “who did what first.” If any part of the book can be compared to personalities, the best example would be Alan Turing and his concept of the computer as a “universal machine.”

The book’s length is massive: 500-plus pages of meticulously documented presentations, with a bibliography that boggles the mind. Those who remember the first edition of this book in the late 90s can be assured: this is not a rehashing of that material, with a few extra chapters added to the original. From start to finish, this book is a fresh look at computing given the Herculean advances in computing in the last 25 years.

After a preface stating clearly that the thread that weaves the book together is communications, the first five chapters present the pathway to computing, from the exclusive property of the scientific-military elite to Alan Turing’s vision of a universal machine. The sixth chapter explores Marshal McLuhan’s theory that the “medium is the message” and that further inventiveness to computing should partner with communications as an essential part of any platform.

In chapters 7, 8, and 9, the computer becomes a personal plaything; the computer becomes office equipment; the computer becomes a graphical tool, and sounds the death knell for any scientists hoping to reserve usage of the computer for their personal domain. And if that wasn’t enough of a death knell, the final blow came with the introduction of the minicomputer. Up to the “Atari age,” the parameters for computing equipment were very clear: COBOL for business and FORTRAN for science; IBM and UNIVAC for everything else. But the minicomputer erased those borders.

Chapters 11 and 12 definitively present how communications and publishing became not peripheral to computing but intrinsic to computing. Chapter 13, “The Computer Becomes a Network,” is a natural extension to modern computing given the prominence of communication, that is, the development is the elephant in the room for any discussion of modern computing.

The last chapter (not including the epilogue) is one of the most insightful and excellent observations I’ve read. The title is intriguing: “The Computer Is Everywhere and Nowhere.” The computer and computing can be done on a plethora of sources. The ubiquity of the network, the smartphones and tablets, were all that was needed. Laptops and desktops are simply not necessary to communicate with the world. And, with each passing week, some other device is invented, smaller and more powerful, to enable computing. It seems that the official definition of a computer has been swallowed up by a new kind of being, one as changing as a chameleon.

There is an epilogue. The message of the epilogue is the authors’ value judgment that we are on a one-way trip to the uncertain--and this is both glorious and scary. What we will encounter on the journey will most certainly involve not only computer professionals in academia or industry or computing, but quite possibly economists, social scientists, and perhaps even those in seemingly completely different areas such as environmental psychology. In any case, graduate students, academics, and professionals should not delay in getting to their favorite bookstore to buy this text. It is truly a masterpiece and, I believe, an immediate classic.

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