Like Faraday's lectures, the book is directed at a general audience, and MacCormick gently takes the reader's hand and walks patiently through examples. Sometimes this is, admittedly, at a rather slow pace, but at the same time the book is highly didactical, and does a good job of exploiting a fair bit of intuition along the way. For me, it's been an ideal bedside-table book. There are some lightbulb moments and useful (and re-usable) analogies, and, thanks to the inclusion of anecdotes, it offers a glimpse of the more human side of computer science...
MacCormick's book is an easy-to-read and enjoyable guide to some key algorithms. Above all, it conveys a sense of wonder—at the beautiful science, rather than the technical feats, that makes computers do their magic.
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