--- title: "Recommended Books" url: "https://osherove.com/recommended-books.md" canonical: "https://osherove.com/recommended-books" tags: [] author: "Roy Osherove" description: "The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity by Alan Cooper Click to View on Amazon Implementing" usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)." license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" --- # Recommended Books # Books I Like - ### [The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0672326140/?tag=iserializable-20) by Alan Cooper [Click to View on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0672326140/?tag=iserializable-20) - ### [Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321437381/?tag=iserializable-20) by Mary Poppendieck, Tom Poppendieck [Click to View on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321437381/?tag=iserializable-20) - ### [Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321150783/?tag=iserializable-20) by Mary Poppendieck, Tom Poppendieck [Click to View on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321150783/?tag=iserializable-20) - ### [The Design of Everyday Things](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0465067107/?tag=iserializable-20) by Donald A. Norman [Click to View on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0465067107/?tag=iserializable-20) - ### [Hiring The Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds: The Secrets & Science Of Hiring Technical People](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0932633595/?tag=iserializable-20) by Johanna Rothman [Click to View on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0932633595/?tag=iserializable-20) - ### [Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management (Pragmatic Programmers)](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0976694026/?tag=iserializable-20) by Johanna Rothman, Esther Derby [Click to View on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0976694026/?tag=iserializable-20) - ### [Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams (Second Edition)](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0932633439/?tag=iserializable-20) by Tom DeMarco, Timothy Lister [Click to View on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0932633439/?tag=iserializable-20) - ### [Beautiful Code: Leading Programmers Explain How They Think (Theory in Practice (O'Reilly))](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596510047/?tag=iserializable-20) O'Reilly Media, Inc. [Click to View on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596510047/?tag=iserializable-20) - ### [Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0735611319/?tag=iserializable-20) by Charles Petzold [Click to View on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0735611319/?tag=iserializable-20) - ### [Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321127420/?tag=iserializable-20) by Martin Fowler [Click to View on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321127420/?tag=iserializable-20) - ### [Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1556159005/?tag=iserializable-20) by Steve McConnell [Click to View on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1556159005/?tag=iserializable-20) - ### [The Deadline: A Novel About Project Management](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0932633390/?tag=iserializable-20) by Tom DeMarco [Click to View on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0932633390/?tag=iserializable-20) - ### [The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/020161622X/?tag=iserializable-20) by Andrew Hunt, David Thomas [Click to View on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/020161622X/?tag=iserializable-20) - ### [Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0201633612/?tag=iserializable-20) by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, John M. Vlissides [Click to View on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0201633612/?tag=iserializable-20) - ### [Head First Design Patterns](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596007124/?tag=iserializable-20) by Elisabeth Freeman, Eric Freeman, Bert Bates, Kathy Sierra [Click to View on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596007124/?tag=iserializable-20) - ### [Test Driven Development: By Example](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321146530/?tag=iserializable-20) by Kent Beck [Click to View on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321146530/?tag=iserializable-20) - ### [The Art of Unit Testing: with Examples in .NET](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1933988274/?tag=iserializable-20) by Roy Osherove the book that I wrote. I find it quite good :) [Click to View on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1933988274/?tag=iserializable-20) - ### [.NET Framework Standard Library Annotated Reference, Volume 1: Base Class Library and Extended Numerics Library](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321154894/?tag=iserializable-20) by Brad Abrams [Click to View on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321154894/?tag=iserializable-20) - ### [Test-Driven Development in Microsoft .NET (Microsoft Professional)](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0735619484/?tag=iserializable-20) by James W. Newkirk, Alexei A. Vorontsov [Click to View on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0735619484/?tag=iserializable-20) - ### [Agile Software Development: The Cooperative Game (2nd Edition)](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321482751/?tag=iserializable-20) by Alistair Cockburn [Click to View on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321482751/?tag=iserializable-20) - [Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0735619670/?tag=iserializable-20) ### [Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0735619670/?tag=iserializable-20) by Steve McConnell [Click to View on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0735619670/?tag=iserializable-20) - ### [AntiPatterns: Refactoring Software, Architectures, and Projects in Crisis](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0471197130/?tag=iserializable-20) by William J. Brown, Raphael C. Malveau, Hays W. "Skip" McCormick, Thomas J. Mowbray [Click to View on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0471197130/?tag=iserializable-20) - ### [Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/159184021X/?tag=iserializable-20) by Seth Godin [Click to View on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/159184021X/?tag=iserializable-20) - ### [Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321503627/?tag=iserializable-20) by Steve Freeman, Nat Pryce [Click to View on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321503627/?tag=iserializable-20) - ### [Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Fowler))](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321601912/?tag=iserializable-20) by Jez Humble, David Farley [Click to View on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321601912/?tag=iserializable-20) --- ## About the author **Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery. ### Sites - [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership. - [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts. - [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin. - [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model. - [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps. - [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes). ### Social - X: https://x.com/royosherove - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/ ### Contact - Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7 ### License Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/