KEY BENEFIT: Teaching users new and more powerful ways of thinking about programs, this two-in-one text contains a tutorial—full of examples—that explains all the essential concepts of Lisp programming, plus an up-to-date summary of ANSI Common Lisp, listing every operator in the language. Informative and fun, it gives users everything they need to start writing programs in Lisp both efficiently and effectively, and highlights such innovative Lisp features as automatic memory management, manifest typing, closures, and more. Dividing material into two parts, the tutorial half of the book covers subject-by-subject the essential core of Common Lisp, and sums up lessons of preceding chapters in two examples of real applications: a backward-chainer, and an embedded language for object-oriented programming. Consisting of three appendices, the summary half of the book gives source code for a selection of widely used Common Lisp operators, with definitions that offer a comprehensive explanation of the language and provide a rich source of real examples; summarizes some differences between ANSI Common Lisp and Common Lisp as it was originally defined in 1984; and contains a concise description of every function, macro, and special operator in ANSI Common Lisp. The book concludes with a section of notes containing clarifications, references, and additional code. For computer programmers.

Amazon.com Review
This book provides an excellent introduction to Common Lisp. In addition to chapters covering the basic language concepts, there are sections discussing the Common Lisp object system (CLOS) and speed considerations in Lisp. Three fair-sized examples of nontrivial Lisp projects are also included. The book's clear and engaging format explains complicated constructs simply. This format makes ANSI Common Lisp accessible to a general audience--even those who have never programmed before. The book also provides an excellent perspective on the value of using Lisp.