"Astonishing...Impossible to put down." --San Francisco Chronicle

"Close to the Machine may be the best---it's certainly the most human---book to have emerged thus far from the culture of Silicon Valley. Ullman is that rarity, a computer programmer with a poet's feeling for language." --Laura Miller, Salon

"Part memoir, part techie mantra, part observation on the ever-changing world of computer science...[Ullman is] a strong woman standing up to, and facing down, 'obsolescence' in two different, particularly unforgiving worlds---modern technology and modern society." --The New York Times Book Review

"Fascinating...Chock-full of delicately profound insights into work, money, love, and the search for a life that matters." --Newsweek

"Ullman comes with her tech bona fides intact (she is, after all, a seasoned software engineer). But she also comes with novel material....We see the seduction at the heart of programming: embedded in the hijinks and hieroglyphics are the esoteric mysteries of the human mind." --Wired

"This book is a little masterpiece....I have never read anything like it." --Andrei Codrescu

"For someone sitting so close to the machine, Ellen Ullman possesses a remarkably wide-angle perspective on the technology culture she inhabits." --The Village Voice