This is my review of the "Classic" book The Mythical Man Month: Essays on Software Engineering by Frederick P. Brooks.
This is the 20th anniversary edition of this book, which was originally printed in 1975. Coincidentally this happens to be the year I was born. It is quite interesting to read what would have been considered to be "state of the art" at that time - my how things have changed.
The book is a series of essays about software engineering. This updated edition of the book contains 4 new chapters relating to developments in the 80s and 90s.
Reading this book is probably not going to make you a better programmer, as its focus is more about project management than programming techniques - which is probably why it is still somewhat relevant today. Stuff related to coding that is contained within the book are things like the benefits of programming in a "high level" language such as PL/I and the relative merits of GOTOs compared to IF and WHILE loops. The hardware of the day (IBM S360 etc) would make your mobile phone look like a super computer, my current phone has a 400MHz ARM processor, 128MB working memory and I've added a 2GB micro SD card, it has the added bonus of being portable and doesn't cause the lights to dim when its turned on.
Another thing that has changed is some of the support roles in software engineering have been replaced with various technological advances such as Bug/Issue Tracking software, CVS, Wikis and the like. There were many interesting anecdotes in the book, one I found amusing was in a project, the mountains of documentation were converted to microfiche, a massive cost saving measure (I'm sure the rain forests were grateful as well).
I don't think you should read this book to learn the latest programming or management techniques, but it is well written and as it is a series of essays you can read a chapter and put it down for a few weeks (which is how I read it). It will give you a good perspective on the way things were and may help to predict the way things will be in the future. While I enjoyed reading this book I probably wouldn't recommend it. Your money is probably better spent on something on extreme or agile programming or my current favourite Code Comple 2.
So if my review hasn't dissuaded you from wanting to obtain this historical text, you can get it from Amazon.