Lisp is often thought of 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 the Lisp language, providing you with an overall understanding of the language features and how they work. From this foundational knowledge, you'll move on to practical code examples centered on building a streaming MP3 server. By the end of the book, you'll be able to serve streaming MP3s via the Shoutcast protocol to any standard MP3 client software (e.g., iTunes, XMMS, or WinAmp). Author Peter Siebel also shows you how to store metadata in both a simple home-brewed sexp database and a relational database (MySQL), demonstrates how to use threads to support multiple simultaneous client connections, and much more.