Tech Max Books

[Kay Hamling]

Technologyis exerting an ever-growing influence on our world. Give the gift of knowledge to enlighten the technology-obsessed people in your life and help them learn more about the companies and characters dominating the industry, the news cycle, and, increasingly, our lives.

From painstakingly researched biographies and histories charting the rise and fall of modern business empires to deep dives into the birth of influential gadgets, these are some of the best tech books to gift. You may also be interested in our Best Cookbooks and Best Kindles guides.

Updated November 2023: We have added several new picks to this guide, including A Trip into the Mirror World, Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement, and Sid Meier's Memoir!: A Life in Computer Games.

A well-deserved winner of the Pulitzer Prize, this book should be required reading for anyone who works in technology or harbors a curiosity about how it came to dominate our lives. First published in 1981, the book reveals the inner workings of Data General in the 1970s as the company strives to design and release a successful next-generation minicomputer. Kidder captures the struggle between management and creatives and weaves a fascinating tale from an ostensibly dry subject. He explains the intense time pressure on engineers that led to a constant state of crunch, the need for recruits to feel like they are working on something important they have some stake in, and the psychology of leadership intent on realizing ambitious projects. It is positively prescient about the dangers of burnout for the unsung heroes who sacrifice so much to build new machines.

This fascinating dive down the rabbit hole of Covid conspiracy is ostensibly about how people confuse Naomi Klein with her namesake, Naomi Wolf. Klein is a leftist journalist and climate activist; Wolf was a third-wave feminist but is now a rabid anti-vaxxer.

If you can't help but ponder about artificial intelligence these days, you'll get a kick out of this book. It delves into machine-learning algorithms and their limitations in an accessible, engaging, and often hilarious way.

Dismissed by many as harmless humor, memes have become powerful weapons in the culture wars. This fascinating book digs into the history of memes, examines their adoption by the alt-right and conspiracy theorists, and explains the role memes play in radicalization, misinformation, and even extremism. By distilling complex issues into seductive inside jokes, memes spread through social media, sowing social division and recruiting the disaffected. Well researched and written, this insightful dive into online culture and its impact on modern democracy makes for uncomfortable reading.

For more on bias in tech, Technically Wrong: Sexist Apps, Biased Algorithms, and Other Threats of Toxic Tech, by Sara Wachter-Boettcher, and Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy, by Cathy O'Neil, are worth reading.

Why you should read it: This book is for IT leaders who are curious about the major ethical frameworks (deontology, utilitarianism, virtue ethics, communitarianism, and the modern responses of responsibility ethics, feminist ethics, and capability ethics) and how they apply to many of the modern issues arising in technology ethics including privacy, computing, and artificial intelligence.

Why you should read it: Curious about the implications of human collaboration with smart systems? This book shares specific use cases of humans working with AI successfully, e.g., a digital system for life insurance underwriting that analyzes applications and third-party data in real-time, allowing human underwriters to focus on more complex cases. Read this book if you want reassurance on the positive potential outcomes of AI versus the ominous view that artificial intelligence is a job stealer.

Why you should read it: Looking to develop your AI expertise and machine learning on edge devices? Want to understand which projects are best solved with edge AI? This book gives engineering professionals and product managers a framework for solving real-world problems using edge AI. Edge AI will soon become the standard 'systems engineer' tool. Read "AI at the Edge" to learn how to design and support edge AI and ML products.

Why you should read it: You want to become a more modern, educated leader by exploring how the history of data and statistical analysis informs the complex relationship between race and machine learning. Interested in considering alternative approaches to contemporary algorithmic practice and understanding racial hierarchies? This is the book all tech leaders should be reading!

The opinions expressed on this website are those of each author, not of the author's employer or of Red Hat. The Enterprisers Project aspires to publish all content under a Creative Commons license but may not be able to do so in all cases. You are responsible for ensuring that you have the necessary permission to reuse any work on this site. Red Hat and the Red Hat logo are trademarks of Red Hat, Inc., registered in the United States and other countries.

The popular reading collection at the Georgia Tech Library is located on the first floor of Price Gilbert. These are current popular literature available for checkout at a self-check kiosk or at the INFODesk on the Grove level. New items arrive every month!

Flipster is a collection of popular magazines including Architectural Digest, The Atlantic, Bloomberg Businessweek, Bust, Consumer Reports, Discover, ENR, Essence, Forbes, Fortune, National Geographic, Out, and Time.

The Fulton County Library System (FCLS) allows every GT community member (faculty, staff, and students) to get a Library card. The Georgia Tech Library hosts a public library card drive every fall semester, but you can stop by any branch library to get a card. The closest branches to campus are:

A Fulton County Library card gives users access to an extensive e-book and e-audiobook collection (Hoopla and Overdrive), streaming film (Kanopy), and streaming music (Freegal). Additionally, users can check out physical books at any FCLS location.

It seems to me that there is a fundamental discrepancy between the way readers interact with books and the way the hack-your-brain tech community does. A wide swath of the ruling class sees books as data-intake vehicles for optimizing knowledge rather than, you know, things to intellectually engage with.

Current or retired Virginia Tech employees and current students can borrow materials from the University Libraries using their Hokie Passports as their library borrowers card. Virginia residents can also borrow materials after registering for a borrowers card using a valid photo ID such as a Virginia driver's license, a valid passport, or a photo ID from another Virginia college. Please refer to our Circulation Policy for more information.

*Tier 1 Equipment includes speakers, chargers, adapters, and cables available at the Newman Library Circulation Desk.

**Tier 2 Equipment includes calculators and external DVD writers available at the Newman Library Circulation Desk. These items are only available to Virginia Tech faculty, staff, and students.

The library charges a replacement fee plus a $20 processing fee for billed items. The amount charged for the replacement fee depends upon the type of item the bill is for. The usual replacement fee is $95 for books and $50 for media materials (DVD, CD, VHS). Replacement fees for more expensive items may be higher.

All fine payments for material types listed above must be for the total amount owed. Any fines that have been sent to the Bursar's office must be settled with the Bursar's office. All other library fines must be paid to the library using Hokie Passport funds via our Fina payment form or in person at the Newman Services Desk. You can also pay fines by mail by sending a check made payable to Treasurer of Virginia Tech to:

The library also accepts replacement copies for billed books, DVDs, and CDs in lieu of a replacement fee. Replacement copies must be the same edition as the original and in new condition. Patrons providing replacement copies are still responsible for the $20 processing fee.

For billed items that have not been paid for, the library will refund the replacement fee if the item is returned within 6 months. Patrons will still be responsible for the $20 processing fee as well as any financing charges incurred for items that have been sent to the Bursar's office.

All library patrons can request most items in Virginia Tech University Libraries physical collections. These items can then be held at the Newman Services Desk or the branch library of your choosing. Additionally, Faculty and staff with a campus address and/or department code can have books delivered through campus mail through the Faculty/Staff Campus Delivery program.

We accept donations of new and used paperback books in good condition. There is a selection of books you can purchase for donation at Blacksburg Books, 401 S. Main St. You can also bring your own books for donation to one of three drop-off locations:

So my book, Data Science for Crime Analysis with Python, is finally out for purchase on my Crime De-Coder website. Folks anywhere in the world can purchase a paperback or epub copy of the book. You can see this post on Crime De-Coder for a preview of the first two chapters, but I wanted to share some of my notes on self publishing. It was some work, but in retrospect it was worth it. Prior books I have been involved with (Wheeler 2017; Wheeler et al. 2021) plus my peer review experience I knew I did not need help copy-editing, so the notes are mostly about creating the physical book and logistics of selling it.

Academics may wish to go with a publisher for prestige reasons (I get it, I was once a professor as well). But it is quite nice once you have done the legwork to publish it yourself. You have control of pricing, and if you want to make money you can, or have it cheap/free for students.

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