Recommended Books

Brief lists of good books about:

Each of the recommended books is linked directly to the appropriate page on Amazon.com. For any other book, please use this link to Amazon.com's home page and they will give me a few percent referral commission (which helps me pay for my server).

Web Design Books

Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, by Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville (O'Reilly)
This is without a doubt the second-most useful book on Web design on the market (sorry, but I like my own book just a little better :-). The authors' emphasis is on the structure of the site and how to facilitate users' access to the information they need the most. Even though these are crucial issues in Web usability, they are often overlooked in the quest for cool pages (that download slowly and are impossible to navigate). I liked the manuscript enough to write the foreword.
Designing Large-Scale Web Sites: A Visual Design Methodology, by Darrell Sano
The major benefit of this book is that it focuses on the design of the entire site as opposed to simply designing individual, disconnected pages. Despite the title, the book is also useful for designers of medium-sized sites or even smallish sites. Because of its visual emphasis, this book is a good companion to the Information Architecture book.
Web Pages That Suck: Learn Good Design by Looking at Bad Design, by Vincent Flanders and Michael Willis
The hardcopy version of Flander's celebrated website: less conceptual than Information Architecture but more fun. Truly, there are so many useless Web pages out there that one can learn a lot from reading these well-argued criticisms.
Collaborative Web Development: Strategies and Best Practices for Web Teams, by Jessica R. Burdman
Why do most Web projects fail? The most common problem is probably misguided goals (i.e., making a cool site rather than one that's good for customers). But the second most common problem is doubtlessly project management. You could even argue that pushing back on damaging goals should be the first duty of the project manager. Anyway, this is the book on how to run a Web project, what the different team members should do, and how to put together a good process. Oh yes, lack of process is another common reason for disaster.
E-Commerce User Experience, by Jakob Nielsen, Rolf Molich, Carolyn Snyder, and Susan Farrell
207 guidelines for how to design e-commerce sites to make them more usable. All guidelines are based on findings from detailed usability studies of twenty e-commerce sites with users in the United States and Europe.

Overviews for Beginners

Web Design in a Nutshell by Jennifer Niederst
If you don't want to go too "deep" in thinking about Web design, then this book gives a quick and colorful overview of the main issues.
The Yale Web Style Guide is now available as a hardcopy book.
I tend to prefer more principle-based or methodology-based books, but there is also something to be said for a long list of detailed design rules. And the online version of the Yale styleguide has for sure proven to be a classic over the years.
Case studies and interviews: Web Navigation: Designing the User Experience by Jennifer Fleming
Not for utter beginners, but after reading Crystal Waters book you may want more detail about large-scale Web designs. That's where this book excels. This is not the ultimate book on Web navigation (despite the title). It is more of a general book about Web design; it's main strength is the way it provides insights into several design projects.

Implementation-Oriented Books

Learning Web Design : A Beginner's Guide to HTML, Graphics, and Beyond, by Jennifer Niederst and Richard Koman (O'Reilly).
If you don't know HTML there are a million books to learn from. This one is a favorite of mine. The book does go beyond basic HTML 4.0 to explain CSS, graphics formats, and the differences between browsers ("platform idiosyncrasies" as the publisher delicately puts it).
Cascading Style Sheets, Second Edition: Designing for the Web, by Håkon Lie and Bert Bos (Addison Wesley)
Cascading style sheets are without a doubt the way to manage presentation design across any medium- or large-size website. For once the blurb on a book cover is right: the authors are indeed "the world authorities" on stylesheets, leading the Web Consortium's stylesheet project, so this is the ultimative reference for HTML stylesheets. Many examples of the slightly obscure features in CSS show how stylesheets can be used to achieve quite refined layouts and page-designs. It would be nice to say that you can pick up CSS from simply looking at examples, but good use actually requires a deeper understanding, as provided by this textbook.
Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing (second edition of Database Backed Web Sites: The Thinking Person's Guide to Web Publishing), by Philip Greenspun
Once you have learned basic HTML you will soon outgrow simple page-based Web publishing and need a structured publishing solution. This is a great book for understanding the issues in running a large site (or, actually, any sites that do something).
Java Look and Feel Design Guidelines
This is the official style guide from Sun Microsystems. I happen to know the lead author who is an extremely experienced and talented senior user interface engineer. So the guidelines are sound advice. But the main reason to use the book for any Java project is that consistency is key to usability. Don't invent your own weird interaction style when you can use proven ideas that users will know from other applets and applications. Also, by following the official rules, you will ensure that users with disabilities can use your interface. There are several other aspects of interaction design that are often overlooked in the heat of fast-moving Internet projects but are still important: following the guidelines keeps you honest and guards against such design mistakes.

How to Buy

These books can be ordered from the Amazon.com online bookstore by clicking on the titles. This service is provided in association with Amazon.com Books and any questions regarding pricing or handling of orders should be directed to Amazon.com. Hyperlinking an editorial site to a fulfillment service is a great example of value-added use of the Web: there is no way I can have a warehouse of books, but through the links you can buy even though I can't sell.

Disclaimer

The books recommended on these pages are ones that I personally like and find valuable. There are many other good books that I simply haven't read and thus can't recommend here.