Lisp has a long, rich history dating back forty years. It has survived all of the programming "revolutions" that have rendered lesser langauges obsolete. Despite it's being taught as a curiosity, if at all, by college and university staff who themselves have a poor understanding of the continuing growth and evolution of Lisp, new generations of programmers continue to seek out Lisp as a tool to solve some of the most difficult problems in the world of computing.
This book is my attempt to help the current generation of Lisp programmers, and to give something back to those who have paved the way for the rest of us.
The first two chapters lay out the book's background and intent. Then chapters 3 through 24 introduce a core subset of Common Lisp. Chapters 25 through 32 introduce useful features that may not be found in all Lisp implementations, or their details may differ among implementations; these chapters should be read in conjunction with your Lisp vendor's documentation. Chapters 33 and 34 offer, respectively, an annotated list of additional resources and an overview of Lisp's historical timeline.