JavaScript: The Good Parts - Douglas Crockford

Overall

Javascript being ‘the most misunderstood’ language, really deserves a good book. This is the closest people have got to be ‘the only’ book you need for Javascript. The author successfully explain the fundamentally difference of the language’s prototype-oriented nature. Therefore fundamentally changes the reader’s perspective on the structure and mentality of programming in it. Definitely a must-see.

Where it shines

The book does a good job of explaining all the components of the ECMA standardized version of javascript. Especially explains the often confusing variable scope: variables don’t have block scope, they are either global variables or inside a function scope. This is a result of the availability of direct references to global variables at any level of nested functions.

The author also spend great length to describe the prototype model of OOP. This is another attractive feature of Javascript that also makes it hard to grasp on. However when familiarized, this becomes so handy that the more commonly used class-driven OOP looks very verbose.