This an interesting mix of history, insight into the thought process behind game design, and actual code to play with. I haven't tried the code download yet, but it was interesting to see how much of it I could 'read' and picture.
I was expecting more about how to actually design video games. There are some nice walkthroughs of some techniques used in different kinds of games but I was looking for more. The history was fun but not very detailed. Overall meh, there are better books on video game design and video game history.