I like the idea of this book more than the book itself. Granted, Tate took on a daunting task: how do you introduce seven divergent languages with seven divergent styles and seven divergent intents in the space of one book? The mission is a good one at least: introduce apprentice or journeyman programmers to a diverse array of programming languages and styles to help thing break out of their comfortable little already-known toolkit.

The approach is at least a half-way decent one: introduce a language, give three days worth of lessons (plus homework) and then use that to bridge into the next language/style.

But it also comes across as very surface-level. Tate even comes right out and says in many instances that he is just barely scratching the surface of each language, that he is giving some language feature a barely cursory overview, or else leaving it out all together. So you wind up with your appetite whetted but without any satisfying take-away knowledge (e.g., my experience here with Scala and Clojure), or else you're turned off to that language all together (e.g., my experience with Io and Prolog).