COMPUTERS: Tools for Today

This is an extremely elementary introduction that does attempt to deal with essentials but wastes far too many words on second-person elaborations of such simple concepts as what computers can and can't cio or how fast they are at arithmetic. There is a lengthy explanation of the computer's number system and an extensive illustration of programming, but the section on flow charts is inadequate, and more crucial topics are not explained at all: De Rossi offers much detail about how punched cards and tapes are marked and inserted but no clue as to what happens inside when ""the information on the reel is then passed along a wire until it reaches the computer's memory."" With no further mention of the computer's memory he goes on: ""When all the information has been read. . . the tape is then rewound. . . ."" Unless you really need a third or fourth grade arithmetic lesson on the binary system you can pass this up.