Rating: 

The book provides a very high-level look at a distributed object-oriented system and gives away the code to go with it: I don't know of any other such book. The high-level approach may not appeal to readers who would be happier at a lower altitude, but the climb has been worth the effort in my case. By setting a high standard this book encourages excellence in design and implementation.

My only complaint about the book is that I wish it were longer---more detail about getting the code working and exactly why and how it does what it does would be appreciated. A discussion of scaling the code to more complicated guis would also be appreciated. I never use the reference section at the back; lots of mediocre books can supply that. What is most valuable is to get inside an expert's head, something which this book allows you to do.