[ih] NYT: Tracy Kidder, Author of ‘The Soul of a New Machine,’ Dies at 80

[Tony Patti]

Tracy Kidder's book “The Soul of a New Machine” was formative for me.

To this day, I recall a single sentence from the book, that captured the essence of "burnout" long before it became a modern buzzword: 
"I’m going to a commune in Vermont and will measure time by the seasons." [instead of by microseconds]

Quoting a few sentences below from the NYT at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/25/books/tracy-kidder-dead.html 

A Pulitzer Prize-winning narrative journalist, he wrote deeply reported books that often focused on heroic goodness in people.

Tracy Kidder, a wide-ranging journalist and author whose deep reporting and novelistic prose illuminated worlds as diverse as home construction, disease prevention and — as portrayed in his prizewinning 1981 breakthrough book, “The Soul of a New Machine” — the computer industry, died on Tuesday in Boston. He was 80.

His most lauded book, “The Soul of a New Machine,” introduced readers to the physical parts and electronic bits that go into creating a business computer. The book arrived just as the PC revolution was gearing up.

When he took on the project, he told a reporter for The New York Times, he was not familiar with the field and relied on his subjects at Data General Corporation to teach him.

“Some of them despaired over my lack of technological background,” Mr. Kidder said, “but most of them were pleased that an outsider was interested in what they were doing.”

While he had to get the technology right, it was not what he most cared about. “It was the people themselves,” he said, “their incredible passion for this thing.”

Tony Patti
(ARPAnet NIC IDENT "TP4")