Rating: 

The title of the book really reflects the content of the book. This books is about using the shell to be more effective in everyday work. The using aspect is generally skipped or skimmed over in most books or even websites about the various shells. Although tcsh is not the most comprehensive shell (zsh comes to mind) or even the most popular, it is nevertheless a complete shell that will allow you to do 99.9% of what you want to do with a shell. Tcsh is also most likely to be available without installing extra rpms or tarballs. What good is a great shell if you don't know how to use all the features? Tcsh is no-frill user's shell and this book is absolutely great at explaining it. I have also noted the most of the extra but necessary functionalities in zsh or bash such as completion, alias, and history are taken from tcsh. I has found that it give me 99% of the functionality of the z shell. This book explains how to actually customize the shell to make ones life easier with lucid explanation. I actually think that this book will help people understand the features of other shells because although the syntax might be different, the concepts are the same.

Some people might consider the lack of programming in csh a problem, I think that it is actually a big plus. It allows the author to concentrate on the once again using aspect. I'm a programmer and I've found myself using the shell 99.9% of the time versus doing shell programming. In addition, you'll find that csh is probably not the best shell for programming anyway. You can read the classic argument "csh programming considered harmful on the author's website.

Overall, this is one of the rare books that is way underrated. If you really spend the time to read, you will come to appreciate it as a gem in the now overly crowded arena of shell books that doesn't show the power of the unix shells.