Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution

This is a non-fiction work by Steven Levy, which chronicles the history of hacking from Cambridge in the late 1950's all the way to the beginnings of Richard Stallman. It covers greats like Bill Gosper, Richard Greenblatt, Peter Deutsch, Steven Wozniak, Lee Felenstein, Roberta Williams, Richard Garriot and many more. Read it!

ISBN: 0-14-100051-1

Required reading for any real hacker. Steven Levy (recently, author of Crypto) traces hacking through several of its early periods, from The Model Railroad Club, or TMRC, at MIT, through the MIT AI Lab, through the Homebrew Computer Club and Steve Wozniak, and from there into a few early Californian gaming companies (namely, Sierra On-Line, Brøderbund, and Sirius), and concludes with a brief look at the exploits of Richard M. Stallman. A scarily accurate look at the hacker psyche. Any real hacker will recognize himself somewhere in this book.

And it's funny too.