Zap! The Rise and Fall of Atari by Scott Cohen

[toptenmaterial]

When I initially read this, I loved it, and believed it to be an accurate and exhaustive early history of the company. Cohen is a wonderful writer and spins a good yarn. When I arrived at AA, however, I was informed that the book was basicly a fabrication.

 

Thoughts on the book ?

[+Random Terrain]

2 star reviews at Amazon

 

1 star reviews at Amazon

[toptenmaterial]

2 star reviews at Amazon

 

1 star reviews at Amazon

 

Thank you for the thoughts.

[toptenmaterial]

From a certain C. Vendel:

 

"I remember reading this book when it first came out back in the 80's and loved it. Then I got educated on Atari and found out that not only is the content of this book wrong, but after speaking with many former Atari employees, many supposedly interviewed for this book, they all came back and said they either were never interviewed or what they said and what the author wrote was completely different. The book glosses over very important area's and misses on most points. Looking back at it now, this book is more damaging to Atari history then helpful, it's false on much of its content. I'm going to add in a shameless plug here, go to [...] to see what REAL Atari history is all about."

 

See, I am with Mr. Vendel on originally loving the book. Too bad it was false.

[tep392]

I was just paging through this book at the library and one thing I noticed is that many of the statements of "fact" provided no details on who was the source of the information. The comments in this thread confirm the gut feeling I had that this book is not very accurate.

 

I left it behind and checked out the following instead.

 

Stan Veit's History of the Personal Computer by Stan Veit

A History of Modern Computing by Paul Ceruzzi

 

These both look very interesting.