The Book
It is, of course, the sort of book that has its own website; the author’s website has a brief overview of the book, as well as links to reviews. The book itself is part of MIT Press’s ‘Essential Knowledge’ series, the entries in which provide clear and more or less uncontroversial overviews of topics and technologies (I rather enjoyed the volume on Open Access, for example). It is an introductory textbook and would serve that purpose well; it perhaps serves the general (or common) reader less well, but that is by the way.