The little LISPer (edition 1989)

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0023397632, Paperback)

There are surprises in store for the diligent reader of this masterful introduction to recursion as a fundamental tool for expressing and solving problems. With wit and wisdom, The Little LISPer unfolds some of the most beautiful concepts in mathematics, computer science, and logic.

The authors' goal is to show that recursive thinking is first of all fun, that it is powerful, and that the programming language Lisp allows one to express ideas recursively and naturally. There are hard problems along the way, but their solution brings mastery of recursive, functional, and meta-linguistic abstractions, developing skills in the underlying creative programming in Lisp. The Little LISPer is self-contained: an interpreter for the language is developed using the tools of the book itself .