Fergal Keane's incisive television reporting, rightly ranking him as a distinguished foreign correspondent, hones his trademark short, sharp sentences that have penetrated the surface of events and circumstance around the world upon Britain in this, his latest venture, based upon a BBC series. He is a wonderful observer, offering not an overview but an underview of the state of the nation. Writing with a controlled passion, he treads the byways rather than highways, giving voice to marginalised men and women whose stoicism somehow sustains them as they stand stranded on the sidelines of the meritocracy march. Whether it is Glasgow shipyard workers fighting to save their jobs, farming communities in North Wales and Devon struggling to survive, or the dispossessed and degraded on a Leeds estate downtrodden by social depravation, Keane brings his integrity and warm humanity to the telling of unsung heroics and courage against the unfriendly forces of economics and environment. When his objectivity is allowed to slip by recalling his own childhood experiences around Dublin—he has chapters on Catholics and Protestants in a town in Ulster subverting entrenched sectarianism-it is not out of a personal sentimentality but a felt need to comprehend (for himself and therefore his readers) the pain and pride he encounters on his journey. Keane is no idealist, he carries no ideological baggage, but the incurable optimist in him believes that more should and could be done. —Michael Hatfield

The computer revolution brought with it new methods of getting work done—just look at today's news for reports of hard-driven, highly motivated young men and women developing software and online commerce who sacrifice evenings and weekends to meet impossible deadlines. Tracy Kidder got a preview of this world in the late 1970s when he observed the engineers of Data General design and build a new 32-bit minicomputer in just one year. His thoughtful, prescient book, The Soul of a New Machine, tells us stories of 35-year-old "veteran" engineers hiring new college graduates and encouraging them to work harder and faster on complex and difficult projects, exploiting the youngsters' ignorance of normal scheduling yet engendering a new kind of work ethic.

These days, we are used to the "total commitment" philosophy of managing technical creation, but Kidder was surprised and even a little alarmed at the obsessions and compulsions he found. From in-house political struggles to workers permitted to tease management to marathon 24-hour work sessions, The Soul of a New Machine explores concepts that already seem familiar, even old-hat, less than 20 years later. Kidder plainly admires his subjects; while he admits to hopeless confusion about their work, he finds their dedication heroic. The reader wonders, though, what will become of it all, now and in the future. —Rob Lightner