The title of the book should really be "Building Applications and Infrastructure in the Cloud using Amazon Cloud Infrastructure".

The book gives a good understanding of cloud computing but it is geared a little towards the technical side and in particaluar Amazons EC2, S3 and their other services.

The primary message I get from the book is that there are a lot of caveats with moving to the cloud, that alone is good because you are getting a realistic opinion and not the latest marketing hype.

This is a good read, and covers all the fundamentals. The technology is changing so fast that already some aspects are out of date but the author freely admits this in the book. This doesn't impact the fundamentals of good cloud design which the book covers in spades.

this is a good book for an overview of cloud computing with Amazon at its core. It may not be as detailed for a lot of issues like standards etc.

I have been waiting a long time for a book on architectures for Applications that run in the Cloud. Based on the reviews I had seen on Amazon on previous books on the Cloud, I gathered that the term "Cloud" was either being used as a way of attracting readers even though the contents of some of these books had nothing to do with the Cloud, or that some of the books did not deal sufficiently or well enough with the key architectural issues.
George Reese's book on Cloud Application Architectures, on the other hand, is an excellent, and in-depth treatise on the subject.
Reese has organized the book well into easily readable sections, and given very detailed information and best practices in each. He has sprinkled the book with examples of command line utility and other code to illustrate his key ideas. He is clearly an experienced practitioner of Cloud Computing. He has written the book with clarity that many other technical books lack. For each of the topics covered in the book e.g. Security, and Disaster Recovery (which, I trust, not coincidentally, rate as the top concerns of CIOs and IT Managers when making decisions about using the Cloud), Reese provides not just the key issues to consider, but also suggests different ways of addressing the issues, with the pros and cons of each.
The main examples in the book are based on Amazon Web Services, E2, and S3. I also appreciated the included sections in the back of the book by GoGrid and Rackspace, which offer different services for the Cloud. The idea of using GoGrids's CloudCenter and other similar servces may appeal to CIOs and IT Managers who are wary of the main issues of security and manageability, while Rackspace's one-stop shop approach to servers, files and sites might appeal to others.
All in all, a practical, and thoughtfully written book. I think this is a book that has the power of changing how key IT executives approach decision making about using the Cloud.

I use, and have been using EC2 in highly distributed and scalable applications that my business now relies on to function.

While EC2 has it's drawbacks, it is a great shot at hosted, on-demand, step-up application hosting.

I am telling you this book is for anyone interested in diving into this explosive technology that makes life easier, from the entrepreneur start up to the enterprise client.

I consider myself well versed in many "cloud" service providers, and this book addresses all concerns with implementations and infrastructures that I had never thought of. From basic questions to unique scenarios that are cloud and implementation specific.

George really displays his knowledge and experience throughout this book. It is a must read for anyone diving into any part of this industry.

Don't be caught without this book, knowledge, and experience. You will regret it the first time you are putting out an enterprise level fire, that could have been easily avoided.

-Brandon