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In an entertaining and interesting yet curious book, Leonard chronicles the evolution of bots, identifies some of the more famous (and infamous) ones, and talks with their creators. Bots is entertaining primarily because Leonard is a very good writer. Bots is interesting because the subject matter is timely and fascinating. Still, Bots is curious because it is hard to figure out just who this book was written for. Leonard straddles a dangerous fence by providing enough technical details to stymie nontechnical readers, but not enough for programmers to get elbow deep into the critters.
None of this is surprising, considering that Leonard is a contributing writer for Wired magazine and that Bots was published by HardWired, the magazine's book-publishing arm. If you like Wired, you'll probably like Bots, although the book does read like a far-too-long magazine article at times. Add to this the Wired look-and-feel (green ink, horizontal drop-caps in weird fonts, unreadable page numbers), and...well, you get the idea.
Nonetheless, Leonard talks to all right people in the bot world and provides an excellent bibliography for further study. And, as evident by conversations with the likes of user-interface guru Ben Shneiderman and others, Bots provides plenty of food for thought.
-- Jonathan Erickson