Modern Compiler Implementation in Java - Andrew Appel

Overall

Very clean and concise book about a rather complicated subject – the compiler design and implementation.

Where it shines

I started off reading the “Dragon book” four months ago and was forced to stop. Because I simply cannot justify the reasoning for the lengthy deductions in there. In contrast, this book does a great job only providing the very essences of all stages of compiling: lexical analysis, syntax analysis, semantic analysis, translating to intermediate code, instruction selection, aliveness analysis, and register allocation. All irrelevant details and math proofs are omitted for the scope of the book.

I would say this is the truly useful compiler book for application developers, not for compiler designers and researchers. Highly recommended!