LISP: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation Hardcover – January 1, 1984

I became interested in LISP some time ago, and started looking for books online that I could learn from. I had heard some good things about Peter Seibel's book, and I gave it a go, but I didn't like his approach . . . he sort of jumped right in and began doing things with LISP before he fully explained them . . . and that's fine for people who like that approach, but for people with my learning style, it was awkward. Then I found Touretzky's book. And I knew this was it. It starts off very simple and gently and the title suggests, and slowly gets you up to speed in small bite-sized chunks. But despite the gentle approach, it does not skimp on important topics. Before you finish the book you are knee-deep in recursion, trees, associative lists and the whole shebang. After reading this, I was able to tackle Seibel with little problem.Bottom line, if you want to learn CL with as little pain and fuss as possible, then this is the book you need.

This book effing rocks! It's so nerdy cool and useful for complete lisp newbies. The author Touretzky rocks too and his computer stenography gallery is historically classic cool. Speaking with a listhp should fall under free speech.

This book is out of date and not useful to learn any modern LISP. It is also not a "Gentle Introduction" as the title claims. "Tedious, confusing and unhelpful" is closer to the truth.