Alan Kay Book Recommendations

A Programming Language

by Kenneth E. Iverson

"This has the same thought expanding properties of Lisp." - Alan Kay (Source)

The Art of the Metaobject Protocol

by Gregor Kiczales

"A real gem for helping to think about design and implementations." - Alan Kay (Source)

The Sciences of the Artificial

by Herbert A Simon

"A much stronger way to think about computing — and what 'Computer Science' might mean." - Alan Kay (Source)

The Principia

The Authoritative Translation and Guide: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy

by Isaac Newton

"I have never forgotten the combined shock and thrill of making my way through this in my 20s." - Alan Kay (Source)

LISP 1.5 Programmer's Manual

by John McCarthy

"I have called this the 'Maxwell’s Equations' of computing, because it presents a very large part of what’s important about programming languages." - Alan Kay (Source)

Computation

Finite and Infinite Machines

by Marvin Lee Minsky

"It is actually a 'math book' — with lots of ideas, theorems, proofs, etc., — but presented in the friendliest way imaginable by a great mind." - Alan Kay (Source)

The Organ-Builder

by Francois Bedos de Celles

"A very different kind of book." - Alan Kay (Source)

The Mythical Man-Month

Essays on Software Engineering

by Frederick P. Brooks Jr.

"An early look and experience with timeless truths (and gotchas) from systems building with teams" - Alan Kay (Source)

Mythology

by Edith Hamilton

"A few more books like this, and by the time I got to first grade I had been ruined for the 'single book - single truth' ideas of school and church." - Alan Kay (Source)

Molecular Biology of the Cell

by Bruce Alberts

"For many years it has been the best single volume narrative of 'life from scratch.'" - Alan Kay (Source)

20000 Leagues Under the Sea

Voyages Extraordinaires, Book 7

by Jules Verne

"A formative book in so many ways." - Alan Kay (Source)

Molecular Biology of the Gene

by James Watson

"A lovely book to read." - Alan Kay (Source)

Art in the Blood

A Sherlock Holmes Adventure

by Bonnie MacBird

"[My wife] completely nailed the Arthur Conan Doyle voice of the characters and narrative, while being able to carry a marvelous story into the much larger realm of the novel." - Alan Kay (Source)

Advances in Programming and Non-Numerical Computation

by L Fox

"One of the books that Bob Barton had us read in his famous advanced systems design class in 1967." - Alan Kay (Source)