Mead and Conway's book is still quite germane. For those of you new to VLSI, this book is one of the key texts in the field. In 1980, the authors managed to abstract the common steps in chip fabrication. In such a way that chip design could now be taught at the undergraduate level, using this book. Plus accompanying layout software. And the student's design could then be taped out and sent to a fab and actually made.
This was a huge breakthrough. Prior to this book, if you wanted to actually make a chip, using a reasonably current fab, then you could not, as a university student. You had to work for a semiconductor company that had a fab. A large gap in your education. It also meant that a lot of chip knowledge was not transferable if you changed companies.
In software terms, this book is a refactoring. Though this term itself did not come into use for software till the 90s. The book can still be profitably read. Its layout ideas have not become obsolete. In fact, if you were to compare this book with more current undergrad VLSI texts, there is little conceptually new introduced in the latter.