PHOTO: Google

Vinton Cerf

Chief Internet Evangelist, Google

Founding father of the Internet, helped develop TCP/IP standards

Novel: The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien (3 volumes, 1954–1955)

First read it: 1965, age 22

“I think I would have to say that The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy takes the top prize for me. Certainly I have read and reread these volumes many times since I first read them in 1965. The richness of Tolkien's imagination and expression still resonates with me no matter how many times I reread his work. The detailed history, the language and especially the poetry create depth beyond the norm in my opinion. I can hear the music in the poetic verses, as I imagine do many of his avid readers. The Good versus Evil theme with Good triumphant is, or course, very satisfying but perhaps even more so is the unexpected courage of the hobbits, especially Frodo and Sam but the others as well. The theme tells us to look beyond the surface to what is inside each person. I think I like most two scenes in the third volume. The first, after the war is essentially over, and the hobbits have come to Gondor, and the crowds proclaim, ‘Praise them with great praise!’ and the second, when the Hobbits return to the Shire and clean out the evil that has lodged itself there (Saruman/Sharkey and his gang).”

PHOTO: IEEE

Donald Christiansen

Former editor, IEEE Spectrum; President of Informatica

Novel: War and Remembrance, Herman Wouk (1978)

First read it: 1978

“Not an easy call. Considering his complete output, my favorite novelist is John P. Marquand, and I have collected first editions of all his work (So Little Time, Point of No Return, The Late George Apley, etc.). But the unique book that comes to mind is Herman Wouk’s War and Remembrance, published by Little, Brown in 1978. Fictitious naval officer Victor Henry helps bring to life the World War II years from Pearl Harbor (1941) to Hiroshima (1945). My own stint in the Navy during World War II made this book of particular interest to me, and I read it soon after its publication.

“It is neither short (1042 pages) nor an easy read. Familiarity with the geography of the Pacific (and Europe), and some acquaintance with naval terms and acronyms, e.g., TDC (torpedo data computer) and Is-Was (a backup instrument for the TDC) will help.

“Historically accurate events and locales become background for the plot. FDR, Churchill, and Stalin, and also well-known naval figures like Nimitz, King, Halsey, Kinkaid, Spruance, Mitscher, Yamamoto, Kurita, and Ozawa appear with regularity and historical legitimacy. The following, referred to in the text by Wouk, are real, not invented: the Wannsee Protocol, the Bermuda Conference, and FM sonar (“Hell’s Bells”). Except for three fictitious submarines, all the naval vessels are real and their actions accurately portrayed.

“In Wouk’s own words, his purpose in writing War and Remembrance ’was to bring the past to vivid life through the experiences, perception, and passions of a few people caught in the war’s maelstrom . . . by scrupulous accuracy of locale and historical fact, as the background against which the invented drama would play.’ ”

“In his foreword to the first edition, Wouk concluded that ‘war is an old habit of thought, an old frame of mind, an old political technique, that must now pass as human sacrifice and human slavery have passed,’ optimistically adding “I have faith that the human spirit will prove equal to the long heavy task of ending war.” Rereading this nearly three decades later, I’d say it appears that his encouraging optimism was, at the least, premature.”

PHOTO: David Mindell

David Mindell

Frances and David Dibner Associate Professor of the History of Engineering and Manufacturing, MIT

Expert in deep-sea archaeology and the technology that makes it possible; author of War, Technology and Experience aboard the USS Monitor (Johns Hopkins, 2000).

Novel: Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon (1973)

First read it: In college

Comment: “It’s a wonderful mix of technology and history, a smart use of technology and rocketry as a metaphor for larger issues in the age of large technological systems, and a unique use of technical topics—spectra, feedback control, chemical processes—as literary metaphors.”