There's a lot of books on various topics of systems, like operating system implementation and garbage collection.

But something I feel is lacking, is a more principled or abstract discussion of distilled wisdom. To get an idea of what I'm looking for:

• Joe Duffy's blog series on lessons from the Midori OS

• "L4 Microkernels: The Lessons from 20 Years of Research and Deployment", GERNOT HEISER and KEVIN ELPHINSTONE

• A fork() in the road

All of these did a really good job of distilling lessons learned from practical systems.

Is there any book (or good papers) to tackle systems design and implementation at that sort of high-level, yet historically informed, viewpoint?

I hope you can sort of understand what I'm looking for