Even if you are not a techie and could care less about computers, Geek Silicon Valley (Globe Pequot Press, $15.95) by Ashlee Vance is a book you’ll find fascinating.

This paperback offers a mélange of useful and sometimes esoteric information, providing an insider’s look at the history, people and places that have made the Silicon Valley the epicenter of the high-tech universe.

From San Francisco to Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara and San Jose, you’ll discover the in places for both socializing and working.

Under “Silicon Valley Soundbytes,” the author offers trivia and fascinating tidbits about people, corporations and places. For example, besides getting some of the inside dirt on corporations like Google, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Yahoo, and Cisco Systems, you’ll discover how people like Paul Kunz, Georges Doriot, Robert Noyce, and Rob Malda left their marks on the valley.

The useful “Click Here” sidebars that the book features suggest places to eat, drink and shop. You may want to check out the “other” Castro Street in the Bay Area. This is the one located not in San Francisco but in Mountain View, where you’ll find a host of cool, affordable restaurants, some coffee shops, a few bookstores, and a sprinkling of arts and crafts shops.

If you are looking for a “geeky” way to spend a day in San Francisco, let this book be your guide. Begin by trying to locate the laboratory in North Beach where Philo Taylor Farnsworth developed the first working TV set in 1927 (hint: there’s a marker outside the building). Next, look for the Yoda fountain in Presidio Park (hint: think George Lucas) and then, to top it off, head for the Edinburgh Castle in the Tenderloin district on lower Geary for an afternoon drink or snack.