Although there’s a saying that you shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover, for any book that features Tony Redmond and Paul Robichaux as the authors, it’s safe to assume it will be a great book! While both books have plenty of interesting technical content, to me that’s not the only things what defines a good book. Tony and Paul are very eloquent writers and I found reading both books extremely pleasant from a language-technical perspective. To be honest, as an amateur-writer myself, I can only dream of ever being able to put the English language to work as they do.

Having read the Exchange 2010 Inside-Out book before, I expected these 2013-version books to contain at least the same amount and type of content. The 2010-version is a HUGE book (+/- 1200 pages!) and therefore I was pleasantly surprised to see it was decided to split the content into two separate books now. This definitely helps making the amount of information more manageable. Don’t get me wrong: there’s still a lot to digest, but having two (slightly) smaller books makes the task to take on the books more easy, if not at least mentally it does! This is also something I do have to ‘warn’ you about. The amount of information and the technical breadth and depth of the content might sometimes feel a little overwhelming. This could be especially true if you aren’t very familiar with Exchange. For some, the technical depth might even be outright too deep. That’s also why I advise you not to try and read any of these books in one go. Instead, take your time to read through each of the chapters and allow some time to let the information sink in. Combine that with some fiddling around in your own lab and you’ll have a great learning experience.

What I like about these books is that you’re provided with all the information to successfully understand how Exchange operates and are then expected to put that knowledge to work yourself. Although there are plenty of examples in the book, if you are looking for pre-canned scripts, how-to’s or step-by-step guides, there might be better alternatives for you (e.g. Exchange 2013 PowerShell Cookbook). But then again, I don’t think that’s what Paul and Tony were trying to achieve anyway.

Conclusion

Paul and Tony have managed to combine a fun-to-read style with great (technical) content making the Exchange 2013 Inside-Out books a must to read. Whether you’re a consultant working day in and day out with Exchange or you’re an admin in charge of a Exchange organization, I’m sure you’ll find lots of valuable information in each of the books which will help you in your day-to-day job.