classic in the field of ood is object-oriented analysis and design with applications by grady booch (addison wesley the author is one of the pioneers in this field and the creator of the booch notation for depicting class relationships this book isn' easy for beginnersbut is essential for more advanced readers an early book on ood is the mythical man-month by frederick brooksjr (addison wesley reprinted in )which explains in very clear and literate way some of the reasons why good software design is necessary it is said to have sold more copies than any other computer book other good texts on ood are an introduction to object-oriented programmingthird editionby timothy budd (addison wesley )object-oriented design heuristics by arthur riel (addison wesley )and design patternselements of reusable objectoriented software by erich gamma et al (addison wesley