Books

You’ll find my name associated with a few books. Most can be downloaded for free as PDF, or you can obtain hardcopy and sometimes Kindle editions from Amazon.

Engineering Software as a Service (ESaaS), 2nd Edition

Co-authored with Turing Award winner Dave Patterson, this book serves as the foundation of CS 169/169A as well as the edX “Agile Development” Professional Certificate. The First Edition, published in 2014, was the 2016 Most Promising New Textbook award (the “texty”?) from the Textbook Authors Association.

PDF version freely downloadable, hardcopy and Kindle versions available for purchase on Amazon. If you buy the hardcopy you get the Kindle version for free!

On the book’s home page you’ll also find freely downloadable versions of the First Edition in English, Spanish, and Brazilian Portuguese, and purchasable hardcopy editions in Mandarin and Greek.

Piano/Conductor: So They Talked You Into Being Music Director

Although I’ve had a good deal of formal training in piano performance, musicianship, theory, etc., like most Music Directors working in a nonprofessional setting I never received any formal training on how to do that.

It turns out there’s a lot of non-obvious tasks in that job, and I wrote this book to pull them all together.

The book focuses on the dual role of the modern MD or Associate Conductor: sometimes you’re leading the orchestra, sometimes you’re a rhythm instrument. And you have to work with the actors (some of whom may also lack formal musical/vocal training) to help them learn often challenging songs, while managing the rehearsal schedule, figuring out which orchestra instruments you can do without, and so on. Substantially all of the techniques are illustrated with examples from the musical theater literature.

Learn more and download the free PDF here, or get hardcopy or Kindle editions at Amazon.

I’m Still Here: Memoirs 1957–1986

Yes, my dad’s family really did own the Tropicana night club in Havana, and my parents really did go there on dates. Their story of leaving Cuba as political refugees, as told through my late mom’s memoirs, has to be read to be believed. It reads like a good spy story in parts, or maybe even a good musical someday.

Here is the free PDF but you can get hardcopy or a Kindle version on Amazon.