The authors (4 guys) tried to cover all IR big words as much as they can, and ended up with the 221 pages book. Let's take one example, inverted index takes 1.5 pages: It says inverted index is a table with the key-pair. The key is all the keywords scanned from the source, and the value is the document and word position (key in that document), period. IMHO, it is apparent facts that inverted index is like this way. But in practical world algorithm, it is much more complicated than a table, for example, how to incremental fill the index, how to sync between multiple backup copy, how to blabla. And even THAT google paper is more useful than it on this area. People may argue it is a comprehensive introduction book, well, then try Gerald's classic book. The whole impression is like I am reading a C++ programming book which spends 10 pages talking K&R's from Bell, how long they had been there, etc ...

I spent about 1 hr scanning the whole book without much left on my brain . Considering the price 69 bucks, I have to give it 0 on performance/price.