Lisp is often thought of as an academic language, but it need not be. This is the first book that introduces Lisp as a language for the real world.

Practical Common Lisp presents a thorough introduction to Common Lisp, providing you with an overall understanding of the language features and how they work. Over a third of the book is devoted to practical examples such as the core of a spam filter and a web application for browsing MP3s and streaming them via the Shoutcast protocol to any standard MP3 client software (e.g., iTunes, XMMS, or WinAmp). In other "practical" chapters, author Peter Seibel demonstrates how to build a simple but flexible in-memory database, how to parse binary files, and how to build a unit test framework in 26 lines of code.

Peter Seibel 從作傢演變成程序員，又從程序員演變成作傢，其職業生涯可謂一波三摺。他在獲得英語專業學士學位後做過一段時間的記者工作，後來被Web所吸引。在20世 紀90年代早期，他用Perl建立瞭Mother Jones雜誌和Organic Online網站。他作為WebLogic的早期雇員參與瞭Java革命，隨後又在加州大學伯剋利分校教授Java編程。他也是第二代Lisp程序員之 一，並曾經是Symbolics的早期股東。2003年他辭去技術工作，潛心研究Lisp，並憑藉本書獲得Jolt生産效率大奬。2009年齣版瞭名噪一 時的訪談錄《編程人生》（Coders at Work）。