#Book Review
206 articles
Escaping the Build Trap: How Effective Product Management Creates Real Value
A review of Escaping the Build Trap. Melissa Perri's introduction to product management. It organizes how to escape the build trap, where shipping features becomes the goal in itself, across four axes: organization, role, strategy, and process.
Evidence-Based Parenting: The Frontier of Education Economics
A review of Evidence-Based Parenting. Education economist Makiko Nakamuro answers parenting and education questions with evidence. On everyday questions like rewards and study time, it avoids firm verdicts, noting likely tendencies and their limits, giving you a basis to judge for yourself.
Python for Algorithmic Trading
A review of Python for Algorithmic Trading. Yves Hilpisch's introduction to starting algorithmic trading with Python. In one volume it covers Python setup and data analysis, trading strategies like moving averages and momentum, backtesting, prediction with machine learning, and trade automation via broker APIs.
Fundamentals of Software Architecture, 2nd Edition: An Engineering Approach
A review of Fundamentals of Software Architecture, 2nd Edition. A textbook-like book by Mark Richards and Neal Ford. It treats architecture not as experience and intuition but as a measurable, governable engineering discipline, systematically explaining the definition, identification, measurement, and governance of architectural characteristics (non-functional requirements).
The Crux: How Leaders Become Strategists
A review of The Crux. A sequel by Richard P. Rumelt, author of Good Strategy, Bad Strategy. Of the prior book's diagnosis, guiding policy, and action, it digs especially into diagnosis: discerning the crux among tangled problems. It argues strategy is not about listing goals but about narrowing down the challenge to tackle.
The Engineering Leader: Strategies for Scaling Yourself and Your Team
A review of The Engineering Leader. Cate Huston's practical book for leaders of engineering organizations. From managing your own energy and recognizing failure patterns to scaling hiring, 1:1s, and building teams that grow the next generation of leaders, it covers a broad range.
CTO''s Thinking: Decision Making, Strategy, and Leadership to Drive Technology and Organization
A review of a book on the CTO's way of thinking. It reveals what a technical leader needs to truly function as part of executive leadership, from three angles: technology, business, and relationships. It emphasizes translating technology into business value, the trap of clinging to the 'right' technical answer, and making strategic decisions under uncertainty.
Everything About Digital Identity: Knowledge for Realizing a Secure and User-Centric Identity System
A review of a comprehensive book on digital identity. It explains everything from concepts to implementation systematically and broadly, covering OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, SAML, zero trust, and decentralized identity, giving engineers who design and operate authn/authz platforms a wide perspective.
Dynamic Re-teaming 2nd Edition - Effective Team Structuring with 5 Patterns
A review of Dynamic Reteaming, 2nd Edition. A book on five patterns for managing and leveraging changes in team composition. It categorizes real-world shifts such as adding one person at a time, splitting, and merging, and offers a view that treats change as an opportunity rather than disruption.
Guide for Engineering Executives: Technical Leadership to Drive Organizational Success
A review of a guide for engineering executives. A book on the mindset and practice of leading a technical organization as a VP of Engineering or CTO. It covers hiring, org design, technical strategy, and alignment with executives, centered on running the whole organization as a system.
The Work of an Engineering Manager: How to Become the Manager Your Team Needs
A review of The Work of an Engineering Manager. A book on practical methods for making a team function as an EM. It prescribes remedies for the real challenges EMs face, such as 1:1s, feedback, hiring, and culture, plus delegation that separates accountability from execution.
Leading Engineering Teams: A Practical Guide for Individual Contributors and Managers Learned from Google
A review of Leading Engineering Teams. Drawing on Google's engineering culture, it covers how to lead teams effectively from both IC and manager perspectives. It systematically addresses topics rooted in daily work such as career ladders, code review, and handling technical debt, useful from senior engineers to EMs.
Five Dialogues to Transform Organizations - Creating an Agile Organizational Culture Through Dialogue
A review of Five Dialogues to Transform Organizations. A book on five kinds of conversation needed to cultivate an agile culture. Presenting patterns around goals, constraints, progress, process, and learning, it fosters cultural change through dialogue rather than top-down mandates, toward teams that act autonomously.
Getting Started with Domain-Driven Design: Practical Techniques for Connecting Software Implementation and Business Strategy
A review of Learning Domain-Driven Design. A book on the thinking and implementation patterns for applying DDD's strategic and tactical design in practice. From identifying subdomains to bounded contexts, aggregates, domain events, and event sourcing, it explains where each fits, bridging DDD from introduction to practice.
Introduction to Digital Identity: Essential Authentication, Authorization, and ID Management for Web Services
A review of Introduction to Digital Identity. A book that plainly explains the basics of authentication, authorization, and ID management for web services, with real examples. It spans the mechanisms of OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, and SAML through single sign-on, social login, and using IDaaS, an ideal primer.
The Art of Leadership - Attending to the Small Things
A review of The Art of Leadership. A book arguing that an engineering leader's small daily actions shape organizational culture and team trust. Shining a light on easily overlooked interpersonal skills and habits, such as how you speak in meetings, give feedback, and run 1:1s, it prompts you to revisit your everyday behavior.
A Practical Textbook on Logging: From Basic Knowledge to Collection Methods, Analysis Techniques, Troubleshooting, Performance Optimization, and Applications in Machine Learning
A review of A Practical Textbook on Logging. A book that systematically explains logging from basic knowledge to collection methods, analysis techniques, troubleshooting, performance optimization, and even applications in machine learning. It broadly covers the foundations for working with logs in practice.
Web Distribution Technology: Utilizing HTTP Cache, Reverse Proxy, and CDN
A review of a book on web content delivery technology using HTTP caching, reverse proxies, and CDNs. It comprehensively explains caching in web content delivery, organizing the ideas behind efficient delivery, and is worth keeping at hand when thinking about cache optimization.
Concrete and Abstract: The Mechanism of Intelligence that Changes How We See the World
A review of Concrete and Abstract. It focuses on the importance of abstract thinking and the contrast between two modes of thought, the concrete and the abstract. It gently unpacks a theme most people finish life without ever studying systematically, offering discoveries both for those who struggle with abstraction and those who naturally think in it.
Designing Questions: Facilitating Creative Dialogue
A review of Designing Questions: Facilitating Creative Dialogue. A book on how to frame and think about questions. From the view that a question's quality directly shapes the outcome's quality, it teaches how to draw out and discover questions beyond existing frames, a stimulating read for creativity.