//subdivision

A really cool book of stories, as much about 'social engineering' as actual down & dirty hacking written in primarily non-techie language - each one could be a 'Catch me if you can' or Swordfish style film.
Robin Hoods, opportunists and plain old thieves, but all the people featured display amazing ingenuity and sideways thinking.
Mitnick himself [...]

Being Digital
N. Negroponte
The DNA of Information
Bits and Atoms
The best way to appreciate the merits and consequences of being digital is to reflect on the difference between bits and atoms. While we are undoubtedly in an information age, most information is delivered to us in the form of atoms: newspapers, magazines, and books (like this one).
Our [...]

Code: The Hidden Language
Charles Petzold
Best Friends
You're 10 years old. Your best friend lives across the street. In fact, the windows of your bedrooms face each other. Every night, after your parents have declared bedtime at the usual indecently early hour, you still need to exchange thoughts, observations, secrets, gossip, jokes, and dreams. No one can [...]

Weaving the Web
Tim Berners-Lee
Enquire Within upon Everything
When I first began tinkering with a software program that even-tually gave rise to the idea of the World Wide Web, I named it Enquire, short for "Enquire Within upon Everything," a musty old book of Victorian advice I noticed as a child in my parents' house outside London.
With [...]

The Animator's Survival Kit
An animation classic
This book is an animator’s classic, no matter what medium the artist may be using. Richard Williams is a true animation guru, with masses of indispensable knowledge to share with his students. Almost the entire book is hand-written and drawn, reinforcing the core ethos of a good animator. It really [...]

Cracking Animation
Animation from the perspective of Aardman Studios
What a wonderfully inspiring book! Nick Park is an old favourite of mine since he animated some adverts in my youth for the Yorkshire Electricity Board - a company my father worked for. His style is wonderfully simplistic, cute and massively expressive.
The book is full colour, and looks [...]

The Complete Animation Course
The Principles, Practice and Techniques of Successful Animation
Another excellent and reasonably focused book from Thames and Hudson. OK, it's hardly a ‘complete animation course’, but it’s certainly a superb primer on most of the main areas and techniques associated with animation, old and new. Everything from character development, through stop frame, cel [...]