Best JavaScript books

Are you interested in learning JavaScript or do you want to pursue a career as a JavaScript developer? Then this is the perfect place for you to find the best JavaScript books. 

Ever wondered what kind of programming languages big companies like Google, Microsoft, Netflix and so on use to make their web pages interactive? 

The simple answer is JavaScript. It is one of the most used and popular programming languages in the world.

Learning JavaScript enables you to work as a front-end as well as back-end software using various Javascript based frameworks like jQuery, Node.JS etc. 

Web browsers like Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, etc use JavaScript for their application support. 

Being a JavaScript developer has its own benefits as it is a high paying and secure job with increasing demands in present as well as the future. 

If you are finding yourself getting interested in pursuing a career in JavaScript, then there are several online courses that will help you. 

Along with it, you will require the best JavaScript books that will give you the knowledge you require in order to be a JavaScript developer. 

This is a list of the 13 best JavaScript books that will help all levels of learners. Read on to find more.

JavaScript: The Definitive Guide:

JavaScript: The Definitive Guide is a book based on JavaScript written by David Flanagan who holds a degree in computer science and engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Definitive Guide has covered mostly the intermediate as well advanced topics of JavaScript that developers use for programming. It will also help the developers from other languages to get started with an in-depth introduction to the most important client-side and server-side APIs available to JavaScript programs.

This book covers several important topics like types, values, variables, expressions, operators, statements, objects, arrays as well as properly using functions, classes, modules, iterators, generators, Promises, and async/await. 

JavaScript’s standard library like data structures, regular expressions, JSON, i18n, etc and features of the web platform like documents, components, graphics, networking, storage, and threads are well explained by the author with several examples. 

Mr Flanagan has also nicely elaborated about the important features of JavaScript like Node.js: buffers, files, streams, threads, child processes, web clients, and web servers along with tools and language extensions that professional JavaScript developers rely on.

As defined by the toughness and advanced level of the content, this book is well suited for those who have prior knowledge of JavaScript or those who have experience in working with other languages. 

Pros:

• The chapters are elaborative and well structured that explains each of the topics patiently so that the readers can get the best of knowledge. 
• An entire chapter “Server-Side JavaScript with Node” is dedicated to solely explain the features and functions of Node.js. 
• Each chapter has a well described summary as an ending. 
• Well illustrated information on symbols and objects. 
• Several short code examples are used. 

Cons:

• This is not the best book to learn JavaScript for beginners, according to the author as well as the audience.

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JavaScript: The Good Parts

Most programming languages contain good and bad parts, but JavaScript has more than its share of the bad, having been developed and released in a hurry before it could be refined. This authoritative book scrapes away these bad features to reveal a subset of JavaScript that’s more reliable, readable, and maintainable than the language as a whole—a subset you can use to create truly extensible and efficient code.

Considered the JavaScript expert by many people in the development community, author Douglas Crockford identifies the abundance of good ideas that make JavaScript an outstanding object-oriented programming language-ideas such as functions, loose typing, dynamic objects, and an expressive object literal notation. Unfortunately, these good ideas are mixed in with bad and downright awful ideas, like a programming model based on global variables.

When Java applets failed, JavaScript became the language of the Web by default, making its popularity almost completely independent of its qualities as a programming language. In JavaScript: The Good Parts, Crockford finally digs through the steaming pile of good intentions and blunders to give you a detailed look at all the genuinely elegant parts of JavaScript, including:

• Syntax
• Objects
• Functions
• Inheritance
• Arrays
• Regular expressions
• Methods
• Style
• Beautiful features

The real beauty? As you move ahead with the subset of JavaScript that this book presents, you’ll also sidestep the need to unlearn all the bad parts. Of course, if you want to find out more about the bad parts and how to use them badly, simply consult any other JavaScript book.

With JavaScript: The Good Parts, you’ll discover a beautiful, elegant, lightweight and highly expressive language that lets you create effective code, whether you’re managing object libraries or just trying to get Ajax to run fast. If you develop sites or applications for the Web, this book is an absolute must.

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Web Design with HTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery Set

Jon Duckett has written Web Design with HTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery Set, based on his years of experience working with web design, programming, usability and accessibility. 

This is a two-book set with HTML & CSS coverings topics like structure, text, links, images, tables, forms, useful options, adding style with CSS, fonts, colours, thinking in boxes, styling lists and tables, layouts, grids, as well as SEO, Google analytics, FTP, and HTML5. 

The other one, JavaScript and jQuery Set, gives an elaborative illustration on an easy and basic visual approach using diagrams, infographics, and photographs combining the two applications effortlessly. 

This set of two best JavaScript books is an ideal roadmap that teaches the best of HTML and CSS in an easy manner with several practical examples which ultimately leads to learning JavaScript and jQuery Set. 

As recommended by the author, this book is best suited for web designers and front-end developers who are exploring their interests and career in JavaScript and its applications. 

Pros:

• Despite its oldness, it has amazed readers because of its well detailed content that prepares you to become a front end developer. 
• Lots of images are used to describe the topics that can give readers visual illustration for better understanding. 
• There are lots of code examples used in this book. 
• This best JavaScript book serves both as a reference and manual book. 
• The HTML and CSS topics are suitable for beginners as well as other levels of learners too. 

Cons:

• This book is rated as outdated in several topics by the audience as it was released in 2011. One fine example of such is when it talks about HTML5 as hypothetical.
• However, it is still helpful in delivering the required knowledge of JavaScript and its applications. 
• It doesn’t have much updated information about JavaScript and CSS features like modern updates such as flex and grid layouts.
• JavaScript and jQuery Set may be tough for some beginners if they don’t have basic knowledge of HTML and CSS. 

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Eloquent JavaScript, 3rd Edition: A Modern Introduction to Programming

Eloquent JavaScript, 3rd Edition is written by Marijn Haverbeke, who has decades of experience in working with CodeMirror editor and the Tern type inference engine.

As this book is mainly for beginners as well as advanced levels of learners, it covers several important topics like class notation, arrow functions, iterators, async functions, template strings, and block scope.

The author has taken great care to explain the working and applications of features like control structures, functions, data structures, error handling and bug fixing, modularity, asynchronous programming, web browsers and so on. 

Finally, you will learn about the important components of syntax, control, and data, manage object-oriented programming, DOM, Node.js to develop servers and utilities and many more. 

After each chapter, there’s a project that helps you to get practical experience by applying the knowledge you have gathered from this book. 

Considered as one of the best JavaScript books, it is well received by audiences all around the world. 

Pros:

• Well described ES6+ (ECMAScript) that is easy for readers to understand. 
• Elaborates many advanced topics like asynchronous programming, node, and data immutability that are beneficial for all levels of learners to get going with their JavaScript career. 
• This book is best suited for intermediate learners because of its structure and topics. However, this book is still intended for beginners too who have basic knowledge. 

Cons:

• Some readers found this book to be hard for beginners’ level of understanding. 
• The practice problems in chapter two are quite hard.
• Similarly, some examples are quite hard to understand and are also unnecessary.

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A Smarter way to learn JavaScript:

A Smarter Way to Learn JavaScript is written about Mark Myers, who is a self-taught JavaScript developer and a former lecturer in the Communications School of Boston University.

Myers has written this book, keeping in view the best interest of the beginners who are just starting to explore JavaScript. He has used a lot of exercises and examples that enhance the knowledge of beginners. 

That being said, it covers the basic fundamentals of JavaScript including code, functions, loops and so on. 

Although ranked as one of the best JavaScript books, this book has received mostly moderate reviews from its readers. 

Pros:

• The book is well written with lots of examples and practices for practical experiences. 
• It is well suited for beginners who are starting to explore JavaScript and its applications. 
• The author has broken down the concepts into easily understandable points. 

Cons:

• According to some readers, the online challenges have not been updated since JavaScript ES6.
• There are a lot of errors in the coding exercises.  
• There are lots of outdated functions and a lack of new syntax. 

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Learn JavaScript Quickly: A Complete Beginner’s Guide to Learning JavaScript, Even If You’re New to Programming (Crash Course With Hands-On Project)

Learn JavaScript Quickly is written on the basis that it will serve as an alternative to expensive programming classes, i.e, act as a self-learning book of JavaScript. 

As programming is one of the most demanding and high paid professions in the world, this best JavaScript book lets you explore the basics and other features of JavaScript, one of the most used programming languages in the world. 

Many big names in the industry like Netflix, Google, Facebook, PayPal, Microsoft, etc highly use JavaScript for running their applications. 

Some of the topics and features of JavaScript covered by this book are basic fundamentals of JavaScript, important concepts, rules, and functions, HTML and CSS, the best techniques and tools, developing Array elements and managing HTML events, complex websites in record time, along with real-world programming exercises and tasks. 

Newbies who are looking to start their career as JavaScript developers will surely get lots of knowledge from this book. 

Pros:

• This book is good for beginners who are exploring JavaScript. 
• The examples used to elaborate the context are well written. 

Cons:

• Many people reported that contrary to the title of this book, it’s actually a slow learning book. 
• The coding script of this book is quite average. 

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JavaScript and JQuery: Interactive Front-End Web Development

JavaScript and JQuery is a book written by Jon Duckett, a website developer in the work for the past 15 years. 

It is a book based on reading, writing and designing interactive codes. Basic fundamentals of programming, core elements of the JavaScript language, recreating methods such as sliders, content filters, form validation, updating content using Ajax, and many more are covered in this book. 

At the end of this book, you will be able to elaborate on diagrams and photography to illustrate complex concepts. Along with it, you will be able to create, design and customize JavaScript APIs, and jQuery plugins that will enable you to write more than thousands of scripts.

This best JavaScript book can be read by all levels of learners, even those who are willing to switch their current programming language to JavaScript. 

Pros:

• Easy to understand for all levels of learners. 
• The author has used several examples and practices for elaboration. 
• JavaScript, API, Syntax, etc are well detailed.
• The authors have nicely elaborated JSON, AJAX, Regex, as well as development and application jQuery plugins. 

Cons:

• There are a few errors in the examples and practices used. 

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JavaScript from Beginner to Professional: Learn JavaScript quickly by building fun, interactive, and dynamic web apps, games, and pages:

JavaScript from Beginner to Professional is a JavaScript learning book written by Laurence Lars Svekis, Maaike van Putten and Rob Percival. 

The authors have used hundreds of exercises and projects that tickle the brain for remembering the best of JavaScript features and applications in the easiest way possible so that you can create your own web applications. 

Apart from this, you will also learn to integrate the browser with HTML and JavaScript, and put dynamic images, shapes, and text with HTML5 Canvas, apply logic statements to code, avoid JavaScript loops, proper execution of codes, and many more. 

This book also teaches you to properly use and apply concurrency and asynchronous programming for better performances, using key libraries, frameworks, and APIs like React, Angular, and Node.js.

At the end of this book, you will be finally able to create and design password checkers, paint web apps, hangman games, and much more. 

This book is meant for beginners who are willing to pursue their career in JavaScript or those people who are simply interested in learning JavaScript although prior knowledge of working with HTML & CSS makes it easier to learn. 

Intermediate learners will also be benefited from this book as they can polish their web development skills. 

Pros:

• There are plenty of examples and exercises at the end of each chapter which makes it comprehensive for beginners. 
• All the chapters are written in a logical and understanding approach that doesn’t confuse the readers, especially beginners, so that they can learn quickly. 
• This best JavaScript book acts as a reference too. 
• It uses many visuals and graphical representation for better understanding. 
• Data types and structures are explained well. 

Cons:

• Lack of mention of pointer, bind, or prototypes. However, it doesn’t affect the quality of this book in any way. 

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Murach’s JavaScript and jQuery (4th Edition):

Murach’s JavaScript and jQuery (4th Edition) is written by Mary Delamater and Zak Ruvalcaba that teaches to write modern JavaScript code that follows the ECMAScript standards. 

This book takes you through the best uses of jQuery, the classic JavaScript library, to manage the DOM scripting that enables JavaScript to get its efficiency.

It starts off with introducing the fundamentals of JavaScript and the best uses of jQuery, then ways to design slide shows, image swaps, carousels, and accordions as well as how to validate the data in forms and how to use plugins and widgets. 

It then proceeds with working with date and time objects, browser objects, web storage, arrays, self-owned objects, regular expressions, and more. Finally, you will be able to develop ECMAScript modules, work with Promises and Ajax, and easily use Node.js.

Whether you are a beginner or someone who has worked with HTML and CSS or other programming languages like Python, PHP, C#, etc you will easily learn working with JavaScript with the code examples, practices, text and illustrations, etc used by the authors of this book. 

Pros:

• As reported by many readers, this book is well suited for beginners due to its structure and format. 
• This book is well written, clear and understandable, filled with code examples and practice exercises that has solution code too. 
• The projects used in this book are helpful in polishing the skills. 

Cons:

• Some examples used in this book are not up to the mark. 
• Some readers felt that this book is a little slow paced. 

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Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja:

Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja is a JavaScript book based on web development written by John Resig, Bear Bibeault and Josip Maras, all being proficient in JavaScript, web development and jQuery, with the former being the developer of the jQuery library. 

This book takes you through the concepts of functions, closures, objects, prototypes, and promises. Additionally, the writers have also written about APIs like the DOM, events, and timers as well as managing asynchronous code with promises. 

This best JavaScript book guides you through the best practices methods such as testing, and cross-browser development that helps you to escape the pitfalls of JavaScript. 

Although this book is written for all levels of learners, newbies may still stumble upon some tough concepts. 

Pros:

• This book is beneficial for intermediate and advanced levels of learners of JavaScript. 
• The comprehension of this book is well executed according to several readers on Amazon. 
• The language used in this book is quite simple and easy to understand. 
• This book will help you greatly in developing advanced Java projects. 

Cons:

• The code samples mostly have the ‘assert’ statements and are all centered around the ninja themes, making it repetitive and boring. 
• Although it mentions that it is beginner friendly, this book is not ideal to get introduced to JavaScript for a beginner.

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Head First JavaScript Programming: A Brain-Friendly Guide:

Head First JavaScript Programming is written by Eric Freeman and Elisabeth Robson, both working in web development. 

The authors have used several creative techniques while writing this book. Some of the techniques include casual writing, the use of appealing visuals for more clarity, fun brainstorming activities and many more. 

This book contains fundamentals to advanced topics, including objects, functions, and the browser’s document object model.

It also teaches you how to write and test applications, understands the power of functions, closures and prototypal inheritance to correctly use them and much more. 

Although beginners with no knowledge or with some basic knowledge of JavaScript can learn this book easily, having little knowledge of HTML and CSS is a plus. 

Pros:

• This book is intended mainly for beginners. However, intermediate learners can also read this to polish their skills. 
• The exercises used in this book are really helpful for beginners as well as intermediate learners. 
• Detailed information on advanced object construction, closures and on how to use prototypes. 

Cons:

• Making API calls and Promises are also not detailed.

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Professional JavaScript for Web Developers:

Professional JavaScript for Web Developers is a book on ECMAScript and several other features of JavaScript written by Matt Frisbie who has been working as a Google software engineer with years of experience in web development. 

Frisbie has written this book as a reference for understanding JavaScript to the core with fresh technical details like ECMAScript 2019 such as new frameworks and libraries, new techniques, new APIs, and more. 

This will increase and polish your skills of mobile web traffic increasing demand for responsive, dynamic web design along with ECMAScript through ES2019 that includes classes, promises, async/await, proxies, iterators, generators, symbols, modules, and spread/rest operators. 

Document object model (DOM), the browser object model (BOM), events, forms, JSON, error handling, and web animation and working with advanced browser APIs like geolocation, web workers, service workers, fetch, atomics, streams, message channels, performance timelines, and web cryptography are also taught in this book in an easily understandable manner. 

This book is specifically written for intermediate and advanced learners of Java who wish to further know and apply various useful features of JavaScript in their daily work applications. 

Pros:

• This book is ideal for intermediate learners and advanced JavaScript developers. 
• This is a great reference book with lots of insights on several technical aspects of JavaScript. 
• If you are preparing for coding interviews then this is a must try book for you. 
• You will learn many new features of updated ECMAScript. 

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JavaScript Cookbook:

JavaScript Cookbook is a book written by Adam D. Scott, Matthew MacDonald and Shelley Powers, all working in different kinds of languages and technologies for years. 

The three authors have constructively described several elements of JavaScript that are well elaborated in this book.

Some of the topics are productive development environments with a code editor, linter, and test server, working with JavaScript data types, such as strings, arrays, and BigInts and enhancing knowledge of JavaScript functions, including arrow functions, closures, and generators. 

You will also be able to temper HTML markup and CSS styles, apply JavaScript at any time with Node.js, access and temper remote data with REST, GraphQL, and Fetch as well as work with the famous Express application-building framework and perform asynchronous operations with Promises, async/await, and web workers. 

Finally, you will get a grasp of features such as object-oriented programming concepts like classes and inheritance and get started with rich media in JavaScript, including audio, video, and SVGs. 

Based on the level of the topics, this book is not really meant for beginners as it requires working with JavaScript or any other programming language for a long time. That being said, practising developers are ideally targeted by the author to be its audience. 

Pros:

• This best JavaScript book is ideal for intermediate learners and practicing developers. 
• Although the topics are advanced and require a lot of patience, the authors have taken great care in making them easy to understand. 
• This book contains several practices and code examples for clear illustration.

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Multithreaded JavaScript:

Multithreaded JavaScript is written by Thomas Hunter II and Bryan English. The former has heavily worked on projects related to enterprise Node.js while the latter is an open-source JavaScript and Rust programmer with proficiency in large enterprise systems, instrumentation, and application security.

This book lets you explore topics like multithreaded programming and its applications, differences between web worker, a service worker, and a worker thread, best uses of threads in an application, as well as orchestrate relationships between threads by leveraging the Atomics object, etc. 

The author has used several real-time examples and practices that let you build applications efficiently as well as explains to you to understand the strengths and weaknesses and how the APIs are used for implementation. 

It is mainly intended for engineers who are using JavaScript for years and even for those who are simply doing only written code using JavaScript as it involves both low-level API references, high-level patterns, and several technical tangents. 

Pros:

• The topics lets you develop skills that are essential for developing modern Javascript applications.
• Even the advanced JS developers will get to learn a lot of topics that are beneficial for them. 
• It has many practical examples and activities that help you to polish your skills. 
• The context of the book is very well structured for better understanding. 

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Conclusion:

This is the complete list of best JavaScript books that we have gathered through deep research over the internet. 

Though some books may not fulfill your requirements because of the capacity level of understanding JavaScript, it will certainly fill up the gaps and make you explore intensely about JavaScript, making you fall in love with it. 

Whether you are a beginner, intermediate or advanced level learner, any book from this list of best JavaScript books will help you with respect to its pros and cons. 

Let us know if you like this article through our social media handles! You can also let us know about other best JavaScript books if you know any. 

FAQ:

Do these Best JavaScript books are helpful for beginners?

Although some of these best JavaScript books are not solely written for beginners, they can definitely learn important aspects from these books that will help them in polishing their skills and grow their career experience in JavaScript. 

Do these Advanced JavaScript books are helpful?

Yes, the advanced best JavaScript books are really helpful for intermediate and advanced learners of JavaScript as they have well-detailed information on several topics like Node.js: buffers, files, streams, threads, etc that are useful for any JavaScript developer. These advanced topics will also help beginners in ways that enhance their knowledge.