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In a world grappling with the role of the human worker amid computer automation, "self-driving" cars, and generative AI, and with technology's elite jockeying over existential risks of AI on the one hand and the dire need to accelerate AI development on the other, in a moment of reflexiveness we might wonder just how we got here. Though there is much more to that story, Bernadette Longo in Words and Power provides a solid foundation, building on her research in writing Edmund Berkeley and the Social Responsibility of Computer Professionals (2015). Instead of a central character and place framing found in a history like George Dyson's Turing's Cathedral (2012), Longo foregrounds words and their importance in the development of a standard, shared terminology to support the growth of early computer development in serving military strategies during the Cold War. Words are also central to her previous books, including Spurious Coin (2000) and, coauthored with David Kmiec, The IEEE Guide to Writing in the Engineering and Technical Fields (2017). Longo is interested in the humanistic study of computer history, and so, as part of Springer's...