Detailed commentary on the C Standard, ISO/IEC 9899:1999, known in the vernacular as "C99". The book is about 1600 pages in length, so I've been scanning the document until something catches my eye and then I settle down to read the section of the book more thoroughly.

For the coverage proper of the C Standard itself, the author picks out phrases, sentences, and longer passages from the standard and provides commentary under some or all of the following categories:

• Commentary
• Rationale
• C90
• C++
• Other Languages
• Common Implementations
• Coding Guidelines
• Example(s)
• Usage

The overall commentary for each item chosen from the C Standard makes for fascinating reading. The author is very knowledgeable about C, C++, other historical and contemporary programming languages, and historical and contemporary computer architectures. I repeat: fascinating!

The introduction also makes for interesting reading; its approximately 150 pages look into the cultural, economic, and psychological aspects of computer programming, spread across the following sections (plus a couple of others):

• Translation environment
• Execution environment
• Measuring implementations
• Source code cost drivers
• Background to coding guidelines
• Applications
• Developers
• Psychology of programming
• Categorization
• Decision making
• Expertise
• Human characteristics
• Source code

The book can be downloaded for free in PDF form from the author's C Language Book Material page, which also has links to related resources. Also take a look at his The Shape of Code blog.

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Also see the two-part interview with Valencia Wood published by the Ellicott City, MD Patch:

• "Author's First Novel Uncovers Secrets, Haunts and Vampires in Quaint Ellicott City", September 2, 2010
• "Part 2, The Art of Writing", September 15, 2010

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Dr. Zuk, on the brighter side of life:

After all, nothing says natural selection like a brisk round of the plague.

Word of the book: pleiotropy - "the production by a single gene of two or more apparently unrelated effects."

Pleiotropy means that a gene will often have multiple effects, acting at different times during the life span and on different organ systems.

(Also see "Pleiotropy: One Gene Can Affect Multiple Traits", by Ingrid Lobo, Ph.D.)

Also see the Zuk Lab at the University of Minnesota.