The Universal Computer: The Road from Leibniz to Turing

One of the world's pioneers in the development of computer science offers a mesmerizing history of computers. Computers are everywhere today—at work, in the bank, in artist's studios, sometimes even in our pockets—yet they remain to many of us objects of irreducible mystery. How can today's computers perform such a bewildering variety of tasks if computing is just glorified arithmetic? The answer, as Martin Davis lucidly illustrates, lies in the fact that computers are essentially engines o...