A book publisher in the USA once told me there is a big difference between American and European authors (or wannabes).

He explained that when a prospective American author contacted him, they usually said, “I am going to write a book on XXX. Would you give me an advance and publish it?” When he requested a contents list and some sample chapters, many of these would-be authors fell strangely silent.

By comparison, when a European author contacted him, they usually said, “I have written a book on YYY. Would you be interested in publishing it?”

This is pretty much what happened to me with my first book, Bebop to the Boolean Boogie (An Unconventional Guide to Electronics), which is now in its third edition. I wrote this little rascal “just because.” After two years of evenings and weekends spent in the local library (this was before the internet came to save us), I found myself the proud possessor of a finished manuscript.

This is when I started reaching out to potential publishers. I began with companies who were better known for their technical offerings. They either didn’t respond at all (“silence was the grim reply”), or they said, “This looks very interesting, but the first thing we’ll need to change will be the title,” to which I responded, “Don’t call me, I’ll call you” (well, not in so many words, but—since they were in the business of publishing—I’m sure they could read between the lines).

Then a friend mentioned a company called HighText Publications, which was based in California and owned by Carol and Jack Lewis. He said HighText was well-known for books that were highly technical but a bit outside the comfort zone of the mainstream publishing companies. After chatting with Carol and Jack on the phone, I sent them a couple of sample chapters and received a contract by return of post.

HighText was eventually acquired by Elsevier. Now, although the folks at Elsevier are all jolly nice, I do wonder what their reaction would be if an unknown author approached them with a proposed title like Bebop to the Boolean Boogie.

In turn, we might all pause to ponder as to where a young, aspiring author might turn today. Well, one publisher I love is No Starch Press, which bills itself as “The finest in geek entertainment.” As we read on their “About Us” page, “Our titles have personality, our authors are passionate, and we read and edit everything we publish.” I would have thought the latter point was de rigueur for a publisher, but it seems this is not always the case. A friend recently informed me that many of today’s publishers cut costs by outsourcing a lot of tasks. This goes some way to explain all the grammar, punctuation, and other “gotchas” that seem to be on the rise in many of the books I read these days (not the ones from No Starch Press, I hasten to add).

To be honest, I’ve never seen a No Starch publication that I didn’t want to add to my library. One I acquired almost ten years ago, Learn to Program with Minecraft: Transform Your World with the Power of Python by Craig Richardson, is quite possibly the most captivating introduction to the Python programming/scripting language I’ve ever read.

In fact, three No Starch books upon which I’ve feasted my orbs this year are sitting on my desk as I pen these words. First, we have Dead Simple Python: Idiomatic Python for the Impatient Programmer by Jason C. McDonald. This is described as “a thorough introduction to every feature of the Python language for programmers who are eager to write production code,” and it fully lives up to its stated goals. You don’t have to know Python to read it (although it wouldn’t hurt). Contrariwise, even if you do know Python, you’ll know a lot more after reading this tome.

Next, we have Computer Architecture: From the Stone Age to the Quantum Age by Charles Fox. I’ve read lots of books on computer architecture in my time, but the depth and scope of this one blew me away. For example, as I wrote in my Will the Renesas RZ/V2H MPU Dominate Embedded AI Vision Applications? column on EE Journal:

I’ve long been familiar with Charles Babbage’s proposal for a mechanical computer called the Analytical Steam Engine circa 1837. I knew it had a mechanical central processing unit CPU) and a mechanical random-access memory (RAM), but I’ve never been introduced to its inner workings… until now. I now know that this bodacious beauty was intended to work with 50-digit decimal numbers. Also, it had a mechanical data bus connecting the CPU and RAM. Also, the CPU contained mechanical registers, a mechanical arithmetic logic unit (ALU), and a mechanical control unit (fetch, decode, execute, store). More importantly, I now have a much better idea as to how all these functions were physically implemented and how they worked together (and I’m only on Page 83 of 436!).

Finally (at least for this column), we have The Game Console 2.0: A Photographic History from Atari to Xbox by Evan Amos. This will delight anyone with an interest in the history of video games. For those of us who actually lived through much of this history, this book provides a nostalgic meander down memory lane. My friend Steve Leibson wrote a great review (with accompanying photos) in his “The Game Console 2.0” Serves up Images of 123 Home Video Game Consoles Across 9 Generations column on EE Journal. In fact, this book is so interesting that--prompted by the writing of this column--I’ve just started to read it again.

But wait, there’s more. A few weeks ago, I was chatting with my friend Joe Farr in the UK when he mentioned seeing a book on writing C compilers that he thought looked interesting. Well, I just ran across this book on the No Starch website (what are the odds?). It’s called Writing a C Compiler: Build a Real Programming Language from Scratch by Nora Sandler.

Oh my! I’ve long wanted to know how to do this. I spend more time than is good for me worrying about how I would support myself if I inadvertently wandered into a timeslip and found myself transported back to the late 1930s or early 1940s (see my Building a Computer, Should You Inadvertently Travel Back in Time column). Knowing how to create a C compiler would be one more tool at my disposal, so I think we can expect to see Writing a C Compiler appear on my desk in the not-so-distant future.

What say you? Do you already own any of the offerings from No Starch? Has anything you’ve read here piqued your interest? And do you see anything on the No Starch website that you find to be particularly tempting? If so, please share your thoughts with the rest of us.