I am enjoying the "meta-discussion" about the value of biographies. Although not directly computer-related, these two deserve mention: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_the_Saints (Bonus points if you went to a Jesuit high school and read them in Latin.) https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/lives-engineers This edition is edited by Thomas Parke Hughes. At one time required reading for anyone studying the history of technology. Lives of the Engineers | The MIT Press<https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/lives-engineers> The original edition of this work, first printer as two volumes in 1861, has long been out of print and is now a collector's item. Samuel Smiles (1812-1904) was a popular writer of “edifying” books, in the Victorian sense, whose best-known work, Self-Help (published in 1859), had sold almost a quarter of a million copies by 1900. As a British counterpart of the writers of American ... mitpress.mit.edu Best, Paul Ceruzzi