The MANIAC by Benjamin Labatut
Is this fact or fiction? In the world of AI, does it even matter? This is a novel about the history of AI that is mostly based on fact. The author started with a bunch of facts, then embellished the detailed of how they happened. There are many internal details that read like a tell-all documentary. There is a great deal of artistic license taking in these part, most of the purpose of making John von Neumann look bad.
The book spends the bulk of the time in a middle section on the life of von Neumann. The start is short bit about a friend of Einstein. The end covers modern AI, including alphaGo and the Go player that it defeated. (The AI did lose one round when the human played a move that it didn't crasp, causing it to fall into a loop of bad moves.)
The book has a gothic feel, implying that AI may be the dark abyss that we are falling into. Did von Neumann make a deal with the devil to set us on this path?
Where did computers come from? Despite Turing having his name in the title, this book focuses on the roll of John von Neumann. A math genius as a child, he played a central part in bringing about the early computers. There were also other players who helped influence the computer revolution. The recruiting of refugees from Europe to American universities helped get the brain power together. The need to rapidly calculate trajectories for warfare helped to provide a goal (and a source for funding.)