Reddit reviews Scheme and the Art of Programming

Some context, I've been living in this house for about 3 years now, my girlfriend and i moved in to take care of the owner of the house. Turns out that he was a big lisp / scheme hacker back in the 80s-90s and had developed a lot of cutting edge tech in his hay day. Anyway, these books have been hiding in his library downstairs...

It was like finding a bunch of hidden magical scrolls of lost knowledge :)

edit: I will compile a list of the books later. I'm out doing 4th of July things.

update: List of books

• Lisp: Style and Design by Molly M. Miller and Eric Benson
  ISBN: 1-55558-044-0
  
  
• Common Lisp The Language Second Edition by Guy L. Steele
  ISBN: 1-55558-042-4
  
  
• The Little LISPer Trade Edition by Daniel P. Friedman and Matthias Felleisen
  ISBN: 0-262-56038-0
  
  
• Common LISPcraft by Robert Wilensky
  ISBN: 0-393-95544-3
  
  
• Object-Oriented Programming in Common Lisp by Sonya E. Keene
  ISBN: 0-201-17589-4
  
  
• Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by Harold Abelson, Gerald Jay Sussman w/Julie Sussman
  ISBN: 0-07-000-422-6
  
  
• ANSI Common Lisp by Paul Graham
  ISBN: 0-13-370875-6
  
  
• Programming Paradigms in LISP by Rajeev Sangal
  ISBN: 0-07-054666-5
  
  
• The Art of the Metaobject Protocol by Gregor Kiczales, Jim des Rivieres, and Daniel G. Bobrow
  ISBN: 0-262-11158-6
  
  
• Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming: Case Studies in Common Lisp by Peter Norvig
  ISBN: 1-55860-191-0
  
  
• Practical Common Lisp by Peter Seibel
  ISBN: 1-59059-239-5
  
  
• Common Lisp The Language by Guy L. Steele
  ISBN: 0-932376-41-X
  
  
• Anatomy of Lisp by John Allen
  ISBN: 0-07-001115-X
  
  
• Lisp Objects, and Symbolic Programming by Robert R. Kessler
  ISBN: 0-673-39773-4
  
  
• Performance and Evaluation of Lisp Systems by Richard P. Gabriel
  ISBN: 0-262-07093-6
  
  
• A Programmer's Guide to Common Lisp by Deborah G. Tatar
  ISBN: 0-932376-87-8
  
  
• Understanding CLOS The Common Lisp Object System by Jo A. Lawless and Molly M. Miller
  ISBN: 0-13-717232-X
  
  
• The Common Lisp Companion by Tim D. Koschmann
  ISBN: 0-417-50308-8
  
  
• Symbolic Computing with Lisp and Prolog by Robert A. Mueller and Rex L. Page
  ISBN: 0-471-60771-1
  
  
• Scheme and the Art of Programming by George Springer and Daniel P. Friedman
  ISBN: 0-262-19288-8
  
  
• Programming In Scheme by Michael Eisenberg
  ISBN: 0-262-55017-2
  
  
• The Schematics of Computation by Vincent S. Manis and James J. Little
  ISBN: 0-13-834284-9
  
  
• The Joy of Clojure by Michael Fogus and Chris Houser
  ISBN: 1-935182-64-1
  
  
• Clojure For The Brave and True by Daniel Higginbotham
  ISBN: 978-1-59327-591-4
  
  
  
  

Well, I don't have a reference, I have a Scheme program I wrote back in college to do it (borrowing heavily from Springer/Friedman):

;
;This function tests to see if the next attempted move (try)
;is legal, given the list that has been constructed thus far
;(if any) - legal-pl (LEGAL PLacement list)
;N.B. - this function is an EXACT copy of the one from
;Springer and Friedman
(define legal?
(lambda (try legal-pl)
(letrec
((good?
(lambda (new-pl up down)
(cond
((null? new-pl) #t)
(else (let ((next-pos (car new-pl)))
(and
(not (= next-pos try))
(not (= next-pos up))
(not (= next-pos down))
(good? (cdr new-pl)
(add1 up)
(sub1 down)))))))))
(good? legal-pl (add1 try) (sub1 try)))))

;
;This function tests the length of the solution to
;see if we need to continue "cons"ing on more terms
;or not given to the specified board size.
;
;I modified this function so that it could test the
;validity of any solution for a given boardsize.
(define solution?
(lambda (legal-pl boardsize)
(= (length legal-pl) boardsize)))
;
;I had to modify this function so that it was passed
;the boardsize in its call, but other than that (and
;simply replacing "fresh-start" with boardsize), just
;about no changes were made. This function simply
;generates a solution.
(define build-solution
(lambda (legal-pl boardsize)
(cond
((solution? legal-pl boardsize) legal-pl)
(else (forward boardsize legal-pl boardsize)))))
;
;This function dictates how the next solution will be
;chosen, as it is only called when the last solution
;was proven to be legal, and we are ready to try a new
;placement.
;
;I had to modify this function to include the boardsize
;as well, since it invokes "build-solution".
(define forward
(lambda (try legal-pl boardsize)
(cond
((zero? try) (backtrack legal-pl boardsize))
((legal? try legal-pl) (build-solution (cons try legal-pl) boardsize))
(else (forward (sub1 try) legal-pl boardsize)))))
;
;This function is used when the last move is found to
;be unhelpful (although valid) - instead it tries another
;one until it finds a new solution.
;
;Again, I had to modify this function to include boardsize
;since it calls "forward", which has boardsize as a
;parameter due to the "build-solution" call within it
(define backtrack
(lambda (legal-pl boardsize)
(cond
((null? legal-pl) '())
(else (forward (sub1 (car legal-pl)) (cdr legal-pl) boardsize)))))
;
;This is pretty much the same function as the one in the book
;with just my minor "boardsize" tweaks, since build-solution
;is called.
(define build-all-solutions
(lambda (boardsize)
(letrec
((loop (lambda (sol)
(cond
((null? sol) '())
(else (cons sol (loop (backtrack sol boardsize))))))))
(loop (build-solution '() boardsize)))))
;_____
;This function I made up entirely myself, and I only
;made it really to satisfy the syntactical limitations
;of the laboratory instructions. This makes it so that
;the input of "(queens 4)" will return a list of the
;two possible configurations that are valid solutions,
;even though my modifiend functions would return the same
;value by simply inputting "(build-all-solutions 4)".
(define queens
(lambda (n)
(build-all-solutions n)))

Complete with comments and all. All of the references to "the book" refer to this book