Head Rush Ajax ships!

"Head Rush Ajax puts dynamic, compelling experiences within reach for every web developer."
-- Jesse James Garrett, Adaptive Path (the guy who coined the term "Ajax")

The Head First series has a lean, mean baby brother--Head Rush--and the first one just shipped. Head Rush Ajax was written by O'Reilly bestseller and uber geek Brett McLaughlin, and makes Ajax accessible and, you know, festive.

The Head Rush format uses the same learning principles as the Head First books, but differs from Head First in breadth/focus of topic, prereqs, and length. Where a Head First book does a complete BIG topic from start to finish, Head Rush zooms in to a more focused piece--in this case, Ajax. So the Head Rush Ajax book, for example, doesn't try to teach you every frickin' detail of Javascript. It's a faster read than a typical Head First book, but with the same approach to helping you load the key concepts into your brain in the quickest, least painful way.

Congratulations to Brett -- he pulled quite a few all-nighters in the end there to get this book out. I should mention that Brett is also now the editor/director in charge of the entire Head First / Head Rush series, and Bert and I are thrilled to have him managing our "baby."

We recently did a four-day Head First authors training bootcamp, and while I'm not yet at liberty to announce the topics, there were more than a dozen authors and editors now working on titles. This has been a spectacularly difficult series format to scale, but it's starting to look like Brett just may be able to pull this off.

If you're interested in the possibility of writing a book in the Head First or Head Rush series, the details of the audition process are here. Hint: it's not about the writing (my writing skills are pretty dicey--and I've authored or co-authored four of these puppies already). It's ALL about what happens between the reader's ears, and what you do to help drive and support that.

Again, congratulations Brett! You did an amazing job on the Ajax book as well as defining Head Rush.