People's Computer: The Rise and Fall of the Computer Pioneer Commodore and the Birth of the PC Industry

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The book is a joy. Incredibly precisely researched history [...] exciting, full of bizarre anecdotes and amazing insights into the early days of this industry. It is worth reading just for the incredible biography of Jack Tramiel [...] Commodore's decline is also lovingly but relentlessly traced.— Spiegel.de

The story of the computer pioneer Commodore - told by the insiders who created the C64, Amiga and other hardware milestones: People's Computer is an adventurous journey into the time when the big names in the industry took their first steps and crossed arms with Commodore founder Jack Tramiel and his engineers. Partners and opponents are the young Bill Gates, who marketed MS BASIC in the late 1970s, Apple visionary Steve Jobs, Atari's Nolan Bushnell and other movers and shakers on the way into the 21st century.

In the struggle with IBM, Texas Instruments and Apple, Microsoft and Atari, Commodore becomes the market leader at the interface between the PC and video game sectors. The inventors of PET, VC-20 and Amiga, brilliant engineers and inventors, whose technology is not only used in their own devices, but also in the Atari VCS and the Apple II, the first graphics and gaming PC, speak in the Volkscomputer. Nintendo later takes over the chips from Chuck Peddle & Co.

Commodore historian Boris Kretzinger and Winnie Forster expanded Brian Bagnall's standard work to include a person, company and game index, technical tables and a photo gallery of Commodore devices - from the late 1960s to the end of the 1990s.

Reading samples: here