No theory, no fuzz, not just pragmatic, but very much so. (The series this book appears in is called "The Pragmatic Programmers".) That means, this book doesn't waste any words on why you would want to use a modular, component-based approach in your Java programming, but it tells you exactly how to do it, and which are the tools that alleviate your tasks the most.
Personally I would have wished a little bit more of background on the one or other technology used, especially the Spring framework, but the Rails-like usage of Pax scripts is a revelation.