As others have gone into, this is a great programming book for many reasons, and is a must-read for anyone who is interested in software design. Rather than waste time reaffirming the excellent positive reviews of this book, I wanted to cover something that I have not seen in the reviews: namely that there are multiple publishers for this book (as it is an "open source" book). At the time of writing, there is this McGraw-Hill publication, and, for 40% less, an MIT press edition. While I have not seen the McGraw-Hill version in person to see what quality benefits it has over the MIT press edition, I am very happy with the binding and print quality of the MIT press edition and would advise saving your money unless you have a particular reason you want to spend a lot more money for the same content.