INQUIRER Top 10 Books you must read

FEW BOOKS about the technology industry have been as warmly anticipated as Carly Fiorina's Tough Choices, due this Monday and available for under £12 on Amazon.

This is in part down to luck as the book arrives just as HP is in the midst of its biggest ever scandal. It's also because the subject is good as it documents Fiorina's wild ride through the dubious acquisition of Compaq, boardroom shenanigans, fallings-out with the high-profile descendant of a co-founder, and ultimately to her being fired.

It's also unusual in that Fiorina is a woman, still an unusual gender characteristic in what remains a largely testosterone-driven business. Finally, it has the attraction of HP being a pet company for many people, a symbol of the US, Silicon Valley and garage startup-land.

We'll have to wait a few days to see whether Tough Choices rattles enough skeletons to join the must-read tomes about the industry but until then, here's our Top 10 IT Biz Books.

10. Accidental Empires. Robert X. Cringely's cracker about the foundations of the PC industry remains a necessary text for anybody seeking to understand the business. It's stuffed with gossip and near-knuckle tales of how tiny startups, off-the-cuff deals, missed meetings, fate and chance came together to create enormous wealth for personal computing pioneers. The price of a pint of milk, 50p, on Amazon.
TRIVIA. The always-readable Cringely recently got into a nasty spat after it was discovered he had imagineered an educational qualification.

9. Start-up by Jerry Kaplan. Kaplan's sweet and sour take on the history of his ill-fated pen operating system company Go offers a text-book example of that old chestnut, the Microsoft-looked-at-our-design-and-next-thing-they'd-built-a-clone argument. The price of a half pint, £1.50, at Amazon.
TRIVIA. This correspondent one rang Kaplan for a quote, forgetting that it was 3AM at Kaplan's US home. Kaplan picked up the phone and took the incident like a gentleman.

8. High Stakes, No Prisoners by Charles Ferguson. The founder of Vermeer Technologies wrote this chilling story of the stresses of starting up the website design software company that later sold out to Microsoft and became FrontPAge. His descriptions of stress and sleeplessness should be required reading for ambitious but nerve-struck entrepreneurs. Yours for under £8 at Amazon.

7. Just For Fun by Linus Trovalds. The likeable Linuxmeister reveals that possessing no sense of humour and a Maoist view of business isn't necessary in the Floss world, although it probably will help you get on in that particular odd corner. About two English pounds on Amazon.

6. The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric Raymond. One to skip through because it has its longeurs but necessary reading in order to win pedantic arguments over development religions. Under eight quid on Amazon.

5. Revolution In The Valley by Andy Hertzfeld. The subtitle says it all: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac was Made. Under a tenner at Amazon.

4. In Search of Stupidity by Merrill Chapman. How smart people made stupid decisions in high-tech marketing. An unsung classic and you can have it for a fiver at Amazon.

3.The Maverick and His Machine by Kevin Maney. Nicely written story about IBM made itself a Big Blue Chip. Compare and contrast to Lou Gerstner's self-congratulatory, almost unreadable Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? And just £1.35 on you know where.

2. The Search by John Battelle. If you're still trying to work out how Google got to be so important, this is the place to start. Amazon is out of stock but you'll find it if you want it.

1. Only the Paranoid Survive by Andrew Grove. Ex-CEO comes clean on the workings of Intel. Incredible person, interesting story as much for what it leaves out as includes. Under a pound would you believe? here.

What the hell, one more for luck:

Digital Retro by Gordon Laing. Nerd porn with long, loving, nay fetishised, close-ups of computers you have loved and lost. Under seven sheets at Amazon. µ