> 1998, and even that version was more about documenting what was out there rather than prescriptively designing anything.

That was the original intent, I think, but decision to incorporate the STL caused the standard library to change massively late in the standardization process.

P.J. Plauger wrote a book on the 1995 version of the C++ library, that ended up being massively different than what the standard adopted: https://www.amazon.com/Draft-Standard-Library-P-Plauger/dp/0...

His libraries were licensed to a number of vendors. Specifically, the STL is covered by https://www.amazon.com/C-Standard-Template-Library/dp/013437... and there is a third book covering the rest of the standard C++ library: https://www.amazon.com/Draft-Standard-Library-P-Plauger/dp/0...

However, the "Draft Standard C++ Library" book was finished just before the standard was radically overhauled for the STL, and the STL itself and the language have evolved massively, so in my opinion, those two book have not aged as well as the C library book has.