This page is a compilation of some of my favorite technical books with small anecdotes next to some of them. I'll update this periodically when I find a new good book, so you could subscribe to RSS on the page if you're interested. Also feel free to leave a comment if you think I'm missing something (or have something that I shouldn't have) on here. The list isn't in any particular order at the moment, just in order of where they are on the shelf, when I thought of them, etc.

Active Directory, 3rd Edition - Joe Richards

In terms of an Active Directory book that goes beginner to intermediate on the familiarity scale for Active Directory, this is the book. Joe spent considerable time revising and adding to the 3rd edition of this book. If you had the 2nd edition it's still worth buying the 3rd edition for the new and revised content. Joe provided the following list of significant imrpovements over the 2nd edition:

1. A real live chapter on ADAM. First in existence outside of the MS docs that I am aware of. I like this chapter, if anyone reads it and has issues with it, please email me directly. I really like ADAM, I want to make sure my info is all correct and that it fits people's experiences with it. Heck I wouldn't mind just hearing about people's experiences so if I write anything else concerning ADAM, I can comment on it so others may not hit the same issues/pitfalls.

2. Significant updates to the Schema Chapters.

3. Significant updates to the Security Chapters.

4. A chapter on basic Exchange (AD-Related) tasks and how to script them.

5. The Site Topology and Replication chapter got a pretty serious update as well.

6. A lot of the scripts were reworked.

Inside Active Directory, 2nd Edition - Sakari Kouti and Mika Seitsonen

While Joe's book (above) doesn't always drill in super deep, this book goes almost all the way. There is a ton of in depth super technical content in this book. This is not a beginners book by any means - the content is highly technical and very in depth. It can be a little dry to read, but in terms of a reference book on the shelf, this is a great book to have. Combined with Active Directory 3rd Ed (above), Inside Active Directory 2nd Ed will round out the bookshelf of any Active Directory admin.

The .NET Developer's Guide to Directory Services Programming - Joe Kaplan and Ryan Dunn

This is the book to have if you have any interest in programming Active Directory or any LDAP directory with .Net. Joe & Ryan cover both ADSI and LDAP programming in depth in this book as well as the new Active Directory oriented classes in .Net 2.0. They also run a website for the book with a discussion forum over at http://briandesmond.com/controlpanel/blogs/www.directoryprogramming.net.

Microsoft Windows Internals, Fourth Edition - Mark Russinovich & David Solomon

This is the book by the guys who are behind all the great free tools from Sysinternals and the pay tools from Winternals. Anyone who is serious about working on the Windows platform should have a copy of this book - it describes in detail exactly how the operating system works at the lowest levels and the design paradigms behind these components. The fourth edition was updated to cover Windows 2003, XP, and 2000. From an admin's perspective, the book includs chapters on analyzing and tuning system performance as well as analyzing crash dumps.

A Practical Guide to Red Hat Linux: Fedora Core and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, 3rd Edition - Mark Sobell

As evidenced by most of the content on my blog, I'm a Windows guy. Linux is not a strong suit of mine, but in any enterrise environment you're bound to run into just about everything under the sun, and certainly Linux. My luck has been that I usually run into Redhat and when I need Linux at home I usually run Fedora, so this book was a perfect choice for me. It has good indepth coverage of almost all of the major services you'll find running on Linux as well as some under the hood coverage of how the kernel works. At over 1000 pages, there's content for everyone in this book. I highly recommend this title as a good way to round out a Windows oriented bookshelf.

Internet Routing Architectures, Second Edition - Sam Halabi

I do some networking stuff in addition to my usual Windows routine. This book is one of a few Cisco books on my bookshelf that I really like a lot. This particular title is more of a theory book than a Cisco book even though it's published by Cisco Press. The vast majority of the book discusses different designs for BGP deployments on the Internet and within networks. It isn't until the end that the actual Cisco commands for the different designs are covered. I like this model a lot because the majority of the book is applicable to any BGP deployment, not just deployments running Cisco at the edge and core. If you're curious how the Internet works at Layer 3, this is also a good book to get more than just a curiosity level grounding in the topic.

Routing TCP/IP, Volume 1, 2nd Edition - Jeff Doyle and Jennifer Carroll

This is the second keeper on my networking bookshelf. This book is part of the CCIE professional development series which is the set of books Cisco recommends for training for their CCIE certification. This book covers in great detail and very high quality all of the major IP interior routing protocols. For anyone who is working on an enterprise or carrier network this is simply a book to have. The book also includes some very detailed coverage of tcp/ip at the beginning and IPv6 information as it relates to IGPs as well. The book is obviously biased towards Cisco and is written in a textbook style, but the core information is relevant regardless of what platforms your network is running on

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