Effective JavaScript: 68 Specific Ways to Harness the Power of JavaScript

Effective JavaScript is the book I wish I'd read before spending months debugging subtle type coercion bugs. Herman's 68 items cover everything from scoping gotchas to prototype chains, and each one includes code examples that show both the wrong way and the right way. The chapter on functions and closures helped me understand why my event handlers were capturing the wrong values, and the section on objects and prototypes clarified inheritance in a way that MDN never quite managed. Some items feel dated—the book predates ES6, so there's no discussion of let/const or arrow functions—but the core concepts still apply. The item on avoiding the with statement is less relevant now, but the principles around scoping and variable hoisting are timeless. I keep it on my desk when mentoring junior developers because it explains JavaScript's weirdness in a way that sticks. The writing is dense but precise—you'll need to work through the examples, not just skim them.