William C ShafferThe author is an IBM insider, having worked a wide range of technical, sales, marketing, and management roles. In this book, he has tapped into his "Top Gun" expertise to explain complex computing technologies in non-technical terms. The book is a vey readable history that brings to life the outsized personalities that drove the many milestones in computing.During his years at IBM, he had the opportunity to do some writing. He managed the development of two significant technical books while contributing key portions. He also wrote many feature articles for the computing trade magazines. After retiring from the company, he started his second career as an author. His first book was an automotive history. Then, he turned his attention to researching this book. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College, which incidentally plays a significant role in this story.The impetus for this project began soon after he had read an extensive history of IBM. As he would learn in reading perhaps a hundred other books about the company, IBM emerged as a monolith whose only product was the mainframe. The author spent his entire career in the exciting, but lesser-known part of IBM that produced small and midrange computers. That IBM, if a separate entity, would have been the second largest computer company in the world, after IBM. That first book he read, a tome of over 700 pages, devoted less than a paragraph to this story. The book's author advised him that if he wanted his history revealed, he should tackle it himself. He accepted the challenge. The author placed the IBM story within the grand arc of computing progress. He wanted to weave in the principal drivers of this evolution, including technology advances, government investment, and societal changes. He tapped into his resources at IBM, who provided substantial support. The result is a balanced account, extolling the company's towering successes while putting its recent failures under a microscope. The book also brings the story up to 2025, with extensive treatment of cloud computing, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and quantum computers.For more information, see the writer's website at www.williamcshaffer.com. Read More Read Less