First of all, let me share with you something that most of you may already know: There are only three books on the RUP. Namely:
- "The Rational Unified Process, An Introduction", by Philippe Kruchthen
- This book
- The Eeles et al. book on J2EE and RUP.

I haven't read any of the other two books, so I cannot tell you how this book falls into the greater scheme of things. I.e. I do not know what sort of overlap exists with the RUP Intro book, or which of the two to read first, etc. What I can tell you though is that this book, as it stands on its own, is a very good book in helping you (a) understand what the RUP is and (b) understand how to apply it on your projects.

First of all, the two authors of the book are as authoritative as can be. Kruchten (the author of the Intro book) is the chief technical RUP guy in Rational. Kroll is the Rational director (or whatever his new title is now under IBM) responsible for the RUP. These guys know the RUP and in a sense _are_ the RUP.

Now, to focus more on the book per se, it is as follows: It starts with a general intro chapter and then it moves on to chapter 2, which captures the so-called "Spirit of the RUP". It contains 8 tenets which sort-of summarize the philosophy of the RUP. Just as with a legal system, where it is not sufficient to only know articles of laws and statutes but you have to be extremely familiar and cognizant of the context in which these laws are applied and the purpose they serve in order to judge correctly, similarly with the RUP you don't only need to know the product with all the info and features it provides, but you need to have absorbed the philosophy that governs the process in order to apply the given material in the appropriate and most fruitful manner.

Chapter 3 I found (the emphasis is on "I"; you mileage may vary) the most useful. It basically charts the whole territory of processes that are out there (RUP, XP, other agile processes, heavyweight assessment standards such as the CMM) based on two important criteria, and tries to make you understand where RUP falls in the plane (and it is not really a fixed point, as RUP is customizable so there is some sort of leeway in how much iterative and/or ceremonial we want it to be).

Chapter 4 is an aberattion to the rest of the book IMHO, and I haven't found it much useful, or to my liking. It basically tries to explain RUP phases etc. in the context of a one-man project. I am not saying that this is necessarily a bad way to try to introduce people to the concepts of RUP in a more practical context - maybe you'll like it; I just didn't.

Afterwards, in chapter 5-9 we have an expounding of the 4 RUP phases, while chapter 10 is product-specific. Chapter 11 is extremely important as it talks about how to adopt the RUP in your organization, and proposes as the way to do so, treating the RUP adoption as a project of its own and applying some sort of "meta-RUP" on it; very interesting! Chapter 12 talks about planning an iterative project and Ch. 13 covers "antipatterns" (although the authors, to their credit, avoid using that term). Ch. 13 is very important reading and some of the stuff in there (e.g. the discussion on what constitutes a bad use case) you will find useful in a context much wider than the RUP.

Because each one of the roles (PM, Architect, Developer, etc.) views the process from their own unique perspective (just as power forward views the ballgame more in the perspective of getting many rebounds, whereas the point guard views in the sense of passing assists and shooting the occasional 3-pointer) it is very useful to have a chapter discussing each role's unique perspective of the RUP. My opinion is the all roles must read the chapters for all roles, but if you are short on time, this also helps you focus on the stuff strictly pertaining to your role. Although I am not a tester per se, I liked very much the discussion on "Good Enough Quality" in the Tester chapter. "Paradigms of Good Enough" and "The Cost of Quality" I have found to be a "must-read".

Also, the book has good references (both books and Web articles - especially from the RationalEdge) and the usual good quality you would expect from an AW publication in general and an OTS book in particular. Finally, even though in the intro the authors play a little pun on themselves on being French and Swedish respectively and thus non-native English speakers, don't get scared by that comment. Their English is excellent.

All in all, a very good and useful read. Buy it if only for chapters 3, 13, and 18. Actually, you may want to buy it even if you are not intending to use the RUP.

This is an excellent book on RUP! Whether you are new to RUP or experienced and just need a refresher course, this is the book for you! Kroll and Krutchten do an outstanding job making RUP easy to understand and consumable for the masses. They help make the move to iterative, risk-based development easy by providing examples for the same three projects (a small new development project, a large new development project and a large enhancement project) throughout the book. This helps to constantly reinforce what is being discussed in a familiar setting to ensure the concepts are understood. All in all, this is an excellent book. I bought a copy and read the first few chapters when I bought four more for the rest of my team to help them make the move to RUP. The proof is in the pudding - the book is working. My team is making huge headway in obtaining a detailed understanding of RUP.

This is a good book telling the philosophy behind RUP. And it also gives some practical advice to adopt, config and apply RUP.Although it is not a thorough description of RUP because it doesn't systematicly describe the disciplines in RUP, it provides some other reference. A good book for RUP beginners.

This is probably the best book on software quality you can get. It is certainly the best of the ones the author has written, and all of Grady's work is top notch.

You'll get a process framework, lots of metrics and examples, and alternative methods for establishing and maintaining a real software quality and process improvement program. In other words, this book delivers exactly what the title promises and more.

Five years after he wrote "Practical Software Metrics for Project Management and Process Improvement" Grady followed-up on the foundation he laid by showing how his metrics-based approach can be leveraged into a viable process improvement program. This book uses the TQM Plan-Do-Check-Act framework as the basis for process improvement. However, he goes deep into the issues and factors to give a complete approach to developing and managing a continuous improvement posture.

Highlights of this book include:
(1) The same story telling approach he successfully used in his first book. The conversational writing style and the logical sequence of the book makes it easy to read. Moreover, the real life examples add credibility and make the content practical instead of merely blue sky theory.
(2) A complete survey of assessment methods, such as the CMM, Software Productivity Research's Software Quality and Productivity Assessment, and Hewlett-Packard's internal QUality Maturity System. The latter two are especially interesting because they are, in essence, balanced scorecards.
(3) Business-oriented - the approach taken never strays from cost/benefit and ROI.

The parts I especially liked included the chapter on software failure analysis (a personal interest), key lessons from adopting best practices, and moving past reasons not to succeed. In fact, if you get nothing else from this book the last part will make this book a worthwhile investment because he shows how to deal with the six most common excuses for not pursuing process improvement (or any other initiative for that matter).

As in Grady's other books there is a wealth of metrics, data and examples. While this book is longer than his other books, it's still a manageable 314 pages and is highly readable. If you are involved with software process improvement initiatives this book should be on your short list.

The only book I've seen about process improvement that backs up the story with real data. Useful examples can tune up your software organization with lessons learned the easy way - from a book!

Can't say enough good things about this book. It's about time we get past Dark Ages ideas about gender and Christianity, most of which have no biblical basis. He gives good practical advice for applying mutual submission in marriage, what abused spouses should do, how to balance work and family, etc. May God continue to bless his calling.

With a full 50% of God's workforce disabled to some extent by the lies of his enemy, it's apparent God anointed J. Lee Grady to pursue this topic, search out the truth, and set the captives free. It doesn't matter whether you are in ministry currently or not, whether you are male or female, everyone needs to read this book. Especially men in ministry. We can change things! Get his other book "The 10 Lies the Church Tells Women" also. Resist the old mindset and just check it out.

Imagine the Greece, Sudan, Nigeria, and other 3rd world countries with this truth.

My wife has ministered for 33 years and she loves it also.

This is a great book about two very important figures in the War Between the States. It is a great introduction to this very important campaign. Dr. McWhiney is a wonderful writer and an important scholar.

This book is a wonderful look at the two icons of the Civil War in battle. Magnificent!

This book is a beautiful, simple book on expanding the unlimited Joy within. The book is set up like daily journals the author has with her inner self and the very simple guidance of connecting with your joy, unconditional love and abundance here and now. The writings are advice given to her, but of course they are things we can all relate to. For the reader, the writings read like a kind of guided meditations that are extremely effective and beautiful.
The book mainly focuses on finding that Christ-Self (or whatever you prefer to call your higher self)in the present, NOW & HERE. Bringing this consciousness into all your life activities and interactions. Growing with a sense of Joy and love. Being aware of your judgements and how they might bring you down,feeling a deep sense of purpose by aligning with your deeper self and finding unconditional self acceptance.
The book doesn't veer too far away from these basic lessons, although the guidance is very subtle it's very powerful.

Although the writing has it's own unique style, to give you an idea of the perspective, it is along the lines of Ekhart Tolle's-The Power of Now. If you liked that, you will also enjoy Conversations with JC. I should also mention that it is similar to the work of the authors friend-Arnold Patent (The Journey&You Can Have It All). If you like her message I recommend Mr. Patent's books because they are extremely well rounded he covers many topics and living life with this state of consciousness in all aspects.

Jc is so sweet and probably the only one that I know that loves to sleep as a hobbie. I think that it is kind of cool though because I personaly love to sleep, and if anyone ever wakes me up. Well lets just say watch out!

I love funny books--the kind that take me away from my hectic life and make me laugh out loud.

That's the way Deja Vu is --

Kerri-Leigh Grady is a terrific writer who writes a fast-paced book that will keep you in stitches. It's funny, touching, and hard to "put down."

I recommend it highly!

Kerri-Leigh Grady's masterful way of blending modern day humor with the prim and proper past as well as weaving a story that tugged at your heart was masterful! Her writing style is her own, but reminiscent of a combination of Nora Roberts and Karen Robards.

Welcome to the Wittgenstein of homiletics: H. Grady Davis. Many books on preaching provide only rules for fitting together the various pieces of preaching. Instead of this, Davis shows us the picture on the front of the puzzle box so that we can see what real preaching is. Davis is not concerned with specific rules for preaching, but rather with developing the preachers sense of form. His central idea is that substance and form are inseperable. An idea, he writes, is like a tree with branches reaching up towards the light. Davis walks the reader through finding ideas (trunks) to discovering how they develop (branches). I would recommend this book to anyone who feels the burden to preach the Word.

Even though this book was written in 1958, it is one of the best books on preaching ever written. It is both a systematic and philosophical approach to the design of biblical expository preaching. H. Grady Davis does a masterful job of exposing the faults of modern preaching while at the same time expounding on the necessity of solid expository design and formation of biblical sermons. I have not read any book since that has improved on Davis' work. His approach is for the evangelical preacher who wants to communicate God's Word as God's Word. This book is invaulable for the seminary student as well as the experienced preacher. Reading and applying this book to your own personal study habits will benefit the reader greatly. Read this book, you will not be disappointed.

Since the dawn of time there have been many great thinkers who have discussed may great topics. It would take me many more years than I have to find my through all of their readings. Therefore, I have been searching for a tool that can help me to navigate philosophical thought. This text does it well, Alfred Jules Ayer and Jane O'grady, who have already traveled down the same road that I am just starting on, have put together a incomparable piece of literature that can serve as a "roadmap" if you will, of philosophical thought. With this, I can read summaries of many thinkers readings and use the maticulous reference section to obtain the works of the thinkers who have most intrigued me. It also is listed alphabetically by authors name rather than topic which seems to be the standard for most other philosophical reference guides. This will provide the more experienced philosophers an excellent reference guide with a different means of query.

In the course of competitive debate, there arises a need for quotations to support one's point of view. Reading the actual books and excerpting them takes far more time than is available, so summaries become necessary. This leaves one two options: quote dictionaries or 'beginner's guides.' the latter include few actual quotations, just the voice of some omniscient narrator stating his opinion. quote dictionaries have a diffeent failing: they are full of 'literary merit' and 'popular idiom', but they contain relatively few quotations of actual substance. this book is the answer. it is so well edited that i could follow the philosophers entire train of thought in his own words without parentheticals. it even includes an excellent index and is very modestly priced for a book of this magnitude. if you've ever had the desire to understand all the philosophers, great and obscure, in their own words, then reference them handily, this is the book for you.

John P. O'Grady has written some igneously curious essays about ghosts and legends and forests and writers. He takes tremendous joy in sharing all the wonderful things he never learned in forestry school but has learned about forests. It is important to note that these essays are quite artful as they unravel or evolve. There is a sense that the stories are too complex, and topics too tangentially related to be unwound in front of a campfire without a map, but still they belong to the forests, of books and trees. Those interested in stories of American spaces will be tickled to find a grand range of locales, Maine, Roanoke, Idaho, New Jersey. O'Grady's undertaking is bonkers and engaging.

O'Grady, with a deft touch and encyclopaedic mind, writes a series of essays covering all kinds of uncanny or supernatural circumstances, some amusing, some sad, some perplexing. He debunks where appropriate, but allows the mystery to remain where it belongs. O'Grady has studied forestry, American history and literature, and his own mind in roughly equal measure. Ambling through his material with him is both fun and food for thought, like taking a walk through the forest with a lovably eccentric and erudite friend.

Poet, essayist, and Southern Agrarian, Allen Tate brings (brought) to his life of Jefferson Davis not only a tremendous narrative talent, but also a deep understanding of, and sympathy for, the Southern culture that produced Jefferson Davis. But unlike other Southern writers who made Davis a larger-than-life hero of the Lost Cause, Tate pulls no punches in his assessment of the President's weaknesses as well as his strengths, and how they may have crippled the Confederacy from the very beginning.

Tate considers Davis a man of high ideals and great personal honor. At the same time, though, he had a "peculiarly inflexible mind" ("he had not learned anything since about 1843") (p. 197) and a "feeble grasp of human nature" (p. 255). He treated his office as a sort of super-minister of defense, and was never "the leader of the Southern people as a whole" (p. 180). The South could have won the war if she had had the right kind of political leader, Tate argues. But Davis, whose rise to leadership was generally unearned (p. 79), wasn't it.

Beyond Davis the man, Tate also has a deep grasp of the Southern culture and the larger historical and cultural issues that were clashing in the War Between the States. In keeping with his Southern Agrarianism, Tate paints the South as the last outpost of European culture in the Americas, standing against -- and ultimately overwhelmed by -- the surging might of restless, expansionist, wealth-seeking "Americanism," embodied in the Yankee Northeast. Tate's grasp of Southern regionalism lets him place an emphasis on the tensions between Upper and Lower South that, for me, shone a light on the instability of the Confederate government that I haven't seen as emphasized elsewhere.

Tate's perspective and narrative form may not be in keeping with more modern styles of biography. But this book is nevertheless an excellent and insightful read, and I recommend it to any student of the men caught up in, as well as the issues behind, America's bloodiest conflict.

This book is no act of idolatry, despite the author's reputation as a Southern conservative and Agrarian. Tate believes Davis was a great man, but he points out his flaws as well, his diffidence in acting sooner that might have won the South the War, his pride, his sometime aloofness, his tendency to remain loyal to generals (Braxton Bragg foremost among them) whose incompetence was all too apparent to others, and his refusal to appoint the right men for the right job.

This is an absorbing read that puts one in mind of Shelby Foote's celebrated War trilogy, although Tate's was written first. It has the same novelistic quality and drive and the same quickly drawn but utterly convincing characterizations. The book alternates between presentations of certain monumental battles and portraits of life on the "homefront." The latter is actually more fascinating than the former. We learn in vivid detail of the strength and loyalty and perseverance of the Southern people.