I'm a long-time software developer, and I've been thrown in the deep, deep end of developing from the ground up what will hopefully be a highly scalable and interactive web application. I've been out of the web game for about 8 years, and even when I was last in it, I wasn't exactly on the cutting edge. I think I've made judicious design decisions and I'm quite happy with the progress I've been making so far, but new, hot web technologies keep crawling out of the woodwork and into my headspace, forcing me to continually revalidate my implementation decisions. Complicating things even further is the preponderance of out-of-date information and the difficulty of knowing what is out of date in the first place.

What I'm wondering is, are there any comprehensive books or guides dedicated to compiling and comparing the technologies out there, end-to-end in the web application stack? I'm happy to learn new techs on demand, but I don't like learning about them after I've already spent time going in another direction. I'm looking for the sort of executive info a CTO might read to make sure the best architectural decisions are being made. And just to be clear, this is a question about resources, not about specific technology suggestions.