I've writen a new book review, this time about the history of John Carmack, John Romero and the company id Software. It's a biography so don't expect source code, but a source of motivation ;)
Review
Title: Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture
Author: David Kushner
Masters of Doom is a semi biographic book. You won't find source code on it, or algorithms to create awesome 3D games. Instead, you will read about the creation and evolution of id Software, and specifically of John Carmack & John Romero, early adopters of the Shareware software distribution model, creators of the revolutionary Doom and the first truly 3D first person shooter (Quake)...
This is a book about motivation, about people good at what they do, but also commited to do things well and get to the top. A book of how hard effort sometimes comes with a good reward. It servers as an example of a (huge) success on creating a startup. Carmack is a 3D guru and a maths monster, and John Romero was good motivating people and doing PR.
Obviously with this kind of books, some info is skipped (for example, id Games have never been acknowledged for having deep or elaborated plots, in fact Quake's plot is not only missing but the resulting theme is a frankenstein-like mixture of medieval, futuristic and horror graphics and monsters), but overall you get a nice picture of how everything happened at id Software.
If, like me, you grown up playing Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake, if you were able to see the creation and rise of the FPS genre, you will surely enjoy this book and the story it tells. If not, it might still serve you as inspiration and motivation.
Tags: Game Dev