I've been meaning to write a clever and informative review of this tidy volume for a while now. Instead, the best I've managed are the illustrations above.

Within the confines of .net development, Mike Gunderloy's coverage is very broad. He goes right through the process of inventing, designing, writing, testing, building and deploying a small .net application.

Mike is a devoted collector of tools, code snippets, pieces of knowledge, and labels himself a 'magpie'; obsessed with shiny things. The extent to which he does this is extraordinary. To review the amount of software tools Mike covers you'd need more arms than vishnu, and more computers than NASA. Hence, it's in our best interest to exploit his fetish.

Be warned in advance though: this is not a thick volume, hence the affordable price. It is highly-distilled, concentrated goodness. And although you could apply many of the principles to other platforms, it's aimed squarely at ".net" programmers.

Keep this book handy, and keep an eye on mike's blog and the book's resource website too.