Review on the book "Beyond Java"
Beyond Java is written by Bruce Tate, published by O'Reilly, in September 2005.
This book is mostly for experienced Java developers to open eyes towards more dynamic languages that may suit some of their projects better.
For people who have been exposed to scripting languages like Perl, PHP, Python or Ruby, it is a read that confirms your idea that some jobs are way much better done by scripting languages rather than by Java or C++.
The author doesn't pretend to be a language expert and throughout the text he exhorts his fellow Java developers to look beyond Java.
Since this book is just 200-page long, it can be a fast read. If you don't know anything about Ruby on Rails or Continuation servers with Seaside (Smalltalk), reading this will give your a cursory view of what they can do and how it may benefit your projects. However for details about development with these technologies, you have to read other books. Hopefully this book can at least spur your interest to try out some alternative languages.
If you are not a Kayaker, you can also skip the first one or two paragraphs in each chapter safely without loss of continuity.