I'm a fan of Sydney Lumet's work, and if I ever feel like making a movie myself, I'd want them to be made like his. Not surprisingly, I decided to read up his book on film directing, called Making Movies. I liked it a lot, and I definitely recommend it.
There are two things to note before reading it, however. First, the book was written in 1995, so some things no longer apply. Unless you want to shoot your movies on film like Christopher Nolan or Quentin Tarantino do, a lot of the stuff about labs and rushes don't apply as much anymore, for better or for worse.
Second, a lot of the book is focused on working for a studio film (Disney, Warner Bros., Universal, etc.) instead of an independent film. This might be helpful if you're working on the next Marvel movie, but for the rest of us, it's worth putting that into consideration. Fortunately, Lumet doesn't paint the studios in an overly positive light, specifically in the final chapter. Plus, his anecdotes on 12 Angry Men (a film that should be studied by any aspiring filmmaker on how to make a movie cheaply) balance out this flaw.
Those notes aside, I do think this should be required reading for any aspiring filmmaker, and I have yet to find another book that gets me into the mindset of a film director better than this one.