BooksToGiveAway

What books do you give away or prescribe to people needing to know?

From BookListPage. See also BooksVeryUsefulOnce, BooksToReferTo, BooksToAvoid and BooksWhoseFirstHalfIsWorthReading

I end up giving away these a lot:

Managing and Measuring Performance in Organizations - Robert Austin
Becoming a Technical Leader - JerryWeinberg
The Secrets of Consulting - JerryWeinberg
The Elements of Style - Strunk & White
Adhocracy - Robert H. Waterman, Jr.
High Probability Selling - Jacques Werth and Nicholas E. Ruben
Roundtable on Project Management - by the SHAPE community

-- JimBullock, 2003.04.25 (Additions, 2003.05.31)

Peopleware - Tom De Marco & Timothy Lister
The C Programming Language - K&R (As example of readable technical book!)
Extreme Programming - Kent Beck
Psychology of Computer Programming - JerryWeinberg

--BobLee

I recommend these often:

Managing and Measuring Performance in Organizations - Robert Austin
Principles of Software Engineering Management - Tom Gilb
Becoming a Manager - Linda A. Hill
Exploring Requirements - Don Gause and JerryWeinberg
What Did You Say? - CharlieSeashore, JerryWeinberg, and EdieSeashore
Three Faces of Power - Ken Boulding
How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work - Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey
Project Retrospectives - NormKerth
Stewardship - Peter Block
The Courageous Messenger - Kathleen Ryan, Daniel Oestreich, and George Orr
Test-Driven Development - Kent Beck
Style - Joseph M. Williams

-DaleEmery 2003.04.26

I've also given away a few copies of Becoming a Technical Leader. I've followed Joseph William's Style through several editions, and really like the most recent one. --DaveSmith 2003.04.26

I haven't given books away much these days, but I still recommend many of the same books listed in this thread. In particular, I have also used and recommend Joseph M. William's book, "Style" (1st edition as well as the latest edition) for improving writing. I also recommend all the books by JerryWeinberg listed in this thread.

It might be interesting to resurrect the annotated book list from AYE #1 if it is archived anywhere. I remember that MarieBenesh had a session with Jerry where a comprehensive list was either passed out or referenced as part of session on training or improving one's self. -- JohnSuzuki 2003.04.28

John, I still have the list. It's 17 pages long. I suppose I could put it on the wiki, but it would lose formatting. - JerryWeinberg 2003.05.10

I gave away copies of the following books recently:

Agile Software Development: Principles, Patterns, and Practices by Robert Martin

Extreme Programming Examined (a collection of papers from an XP conference - not because it's a great book, but because I had an extra copy I wanted to get rid of.)

Test Driven Development, by Example by Kent Beck

Extreme Programming Applied and Extreme Programming Installed (don't remember which set of authors belong to each book - the collection includes Ken Auer and Ron Jeffries.)

I was provisioning a programmer who is usually one of our ProgrammersTwelveHoursApart.

KeithRay 2003.05.10

The single book I have literally given away most is Jerry's Secrets of Consulting.

Books I have recommended often:
Roger von Oech's books - A Whack o the Side of the Head and A Kick in the Seat of the Pants.
Type Talk, Otto Kroeger and Janet Thuesen.
A good Dictionary
A good Thesaurus
Leon Starr's books on How to build rigorous analysis models and a case study of the same.

My favorite giveaway story:
I worked with an earnest young software engineer who traveled a lot as I did for both consulting and seminar work. Once I recommended a Michael Creighton (sp?) book as a good airplane read. Mike said "I never read novels. I read technical books on the plane." He was somewhat of a movie buff and eventually decided to read the book I offered for amusement. The following week he said the book was fun, but what really excited him was visting his mother and learning that she had just read the same book. Mike reported "I found a whole new relationship with my mother that I didn't know existed".

BeckyWinant 2003.06.03

Updated: Tuesday, June 3, 2003