There are various books about how to write well in english, some directed at a specific public (like scientific writers), others directed at the general public. Many of these books, however, have a problem: they offer generic, vague advice.   

The Elements of Style is a book directed at the general public that does not share this common problem. It's a short, concise book, written in an assertive style like no other I have read. To give you an idea of the writing style, here are some passages:

Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

Flammable. An oddity, chiefly useful in saving lives. The common word meaning "combustible" is inflammable. But some people are thrown off by the in- and think inflammable means "not combustible." For this reason, trucks carrying gasoline or explosives are now marked FLAMMABLE. Unless you are operating such a truck and hence are concerned with the safety of children and illiterates, use inflammable.

Dreaming in Code is a great book about the difficulties of software engineering and development. 

The main question that Rosenberg poses is "why is software development so hard?", and he gives examples of many big software projects gone awry, that resulted in great money losses or in much higer costs and development time. 

A big part of the book is about the Chandler project development, that Rosenberg observed closely during three years, as a way to give the reader an inside view of a software project development and of the many reasons for a project to side-track. (Chandler is an open source calendar software developed by the Open Source Applications Foundation (OSAF) and is, in itself, an interesting story even though Rosenberg didn't accompany it to the end. OSAF was founded by Mitch Kapor and seems to have developed only Chandler.)

Throughout the book Rosenberg cites many arguments from many people that say that software engineering should be more like civil engineering which has much more established practices and is much more predictable. I specially enjoyed Rosenberg's final remarks about a bridge that was being built at the same time that Chandler and how it's design, costs, and schedule changed during its implementation...