This review refers to the first edition of "The Ruby way", published in 2001. With Ruby being quite a moving target (as an actively developed language), this book is dated. It seems that the author is about to release a 2nd edition in a couple of months, which will surely be much more up-to-date. Having read "Programming Ruby", I haven't found anything new in "The Ruby way", as it basically treats the same topics. Judging by its name, I was kinda hoping of a deeper treatment of "the way", as in the correct approach to Ruby coding, explaining the mindset a programmer has to get into. But it's far from that, unfortunately. It is more of an intermediate-level reference, touching quite a lot of topics and not focusing too much on idiomatic Ruby. I have no idea what the 2nd edition will be like, but I think it will be quite interchangeable with "Programming Ruby, 2nd edition". Reading both books doesn't really add anything in terms of Ruby knowledge.