From the (Archive e-)Bookshelf: West of Eden

Now that I can read the books that have to be “signed out” from the Internet Archive, I’m delving into that considerable collection. In the context of reading off a computer screen, having to get through a volume in a two-week loan can seem to feel like pushing a bit, but so far I’ve been able to handle that. Nor am I defeated by “the tyranny of choice.” A Wikipedia link happened to lead me back to Peter Nichols’ A Voyage For Madmen, about a nonstop round-the-world sailing race for solo mariners in the late 1960s (which might even so seem to have a few unfortunate resonances with “cooped up in isolation”). After that, the old computer magazines I skim through to feed the queue on Tumblr reminded me of a particular book, and it turned out the Archive did offer Frank Rose’s West of Eden: The End of Innocence at Apple Computer (along with a different book with the same title, a science fiction novel I happened to have read years ago).
( More than the familiar anecdotes )