From the reviews of the second edition:
The book under review ... provides a succint (about 250 pages) reference book to computing topics (ranging from history to people to basic concepts). ... In its succint presentation the book has several strengths: It deals with pioneers (like Zuse) and historical issues ... . The book aims at the general reader or student with some general mathematical background knowledge and some experience with computers who needs a short offline encyclopedia. (Manuel Bremer, Zentralblatt MATH, Vol. 1244, 2012)
Dr. Gerard O'Regan is a CMMI software process improvement consultant at SQC Consulting, and a visiting lecturer at Limkokwing University of Creative Technology, Malaysia. He is the author of the Springer titles Introduction to Software Process Improvement, Mathematical Approaches to Software Quality and A Practical Approach to Software Quality.
Computing in Early Civilisations
What is a Computer?
Early Computers
Developments in the 1950s to 1970s
Revolutions in the 1980s and 1990s
IBM
Technology Companies
The Internet Revolution
History of Programming Languages
History of Software Engineering
People in Computing
Foundations (Boole and Babbage)
Claude Shannon
Alan Turing
Artificial Intelligence