Object Persistence: Beyond Object-Oriented Databases by RogerSessions, Prentice-Hall, 1996.
A book that gives insight into the history of the ObjectManagementGroup's Persistent Object Service specification, and discusses techniques for getting (distributed) objects to save their state to persistent stores at the right time.
Before becoming the mouthpiece of Microsoft, Sessions was a longtime IBMer and was heavily involved in the OMG. Ever wonder where EntityBeans came from? Sun EJB people acknowledge that they have an IBM ComponentBroker? / IbmSanFrancisco heritage. Read this book and you'll recognize some familiar ideas.
See also: DatabasesAreMoreThanJustStorage