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Another book on refactoring that I'd highly recommend is "Working Effectively with Legacy Code" by Michael Feathers. This book gives you lots of practical hints about how to start refactoring a large, messy code-base. While the task may seem overwhelming at first, you can start by getting small chunks of the code refactored and testable.

Wow, you got me there. "Working Effectively with Legacy Code" would be even more directly in-line with what I'm looking for. Way too much Java EE stuff in the code base I'm working with right now.

That book changed the way I look at programming. For me, it was the first book I found that actually answered questions that I didn't have the vocabulary to ask yet, rather than just talking around them.

Disclaimer: I'm the author of the post, so that's not actually a different recommendation, just a more elaborate one. :)

It's one of the classics of our trade; Even if you know everything there is to know about refactoring you should really read it just to have read it. So consider that my recommendation :)

Refuctoring: http://www.waterfall2006.com/Refuctoring.pdf