Rating: 

Though: Even though the user base is growing constantly, it is evident that it is yet far from being as sizeable as Perl's. And this may be the reason that this book has not the qualities of the "Learning Perl" counterpart.

It does present all the necessary properties of Python. It is comprehensive. But it is foremost useful for somebody who has solid computing science fundamentals. Somebody who has vast experience in programming and someone who is good in researching samples and solving problems in spite of little documentation.

The Python community - and especially the authors of this book - present the material from their point of view, but they fail to see the world from a beginner's perspective. They succeed to present the language in its entirety, but they fail to focus the aspect of usability. They are spare on simple examples.

This made this book a little hard to read and unusable for an introductory Python class. - In contrary to the Perl counterpart, used for a Perl beginners' course.