The book "Federated Distributed Systems" by Rajiv Ranjan offers a comprehensive analysis and in-depth insights into the challenges and techniques associated with federated distributed systems, such as grids and clouds. These systems are characterized by their large, heterogeneous resource diversity and dynamic nature, making them suitable for numerous business and scientific applications. The work highlights key challenges such as scalability, resource contention, and dynamics that can arise in the deployment of such systems. It provides a clear representation of taxonomies for designing coordinated systems and their application to modern techniques. Additionally, it addresses methods for enforcing coordination and ensuring scalability in distributed platform services. Although the focus is on grid systems, the techniques described are also transferable to other system classes, including clouds.