“The Internet was Built on O’Reilly Books”

In my last post, Tim O’Reilly, Programming Perl, and EconTalk, I didn’t mention the other bit I found interesting in Tim’s answers to Russ Robert’s questions. He mentioned a Publishers Weekly cover that featured a stack of O’Reilly books with the tag “The Internet was Built on O’Reilly Books”.

I couldn’t track down the cover through regular googling, but I sent a note to Tim complimenting him on the nice interview and asking if he knew the issue. He put Edie Freedman on the job. If you’re a Perl trivia master, you know Edie is responsible for the animals covers and specifically the Programming perl cover. She tracked down the cover from February 21, 2000:

Publishers Weekly, February 21, 2000. Click for larger image.

There’s also books on Linux, HTML, and Java but that’s okay. There’s not a cover large enough for a stack of all the O’Reilly books you’d need for Java. I remember back around 1997 I had a stack about four feet tall. They were all really good, but there was just a lot to reference.