The Java portlet API is one of the less known and actively studied by developers due to the absence of a stable, well documented reference implementation. So a good book on the subjct would be sorely needed but this text is not up to the challenge. It is written by a couple geeks with clearly no inclination or talent for teaching who manage to express even the simplest concept in complicated ways. That maybe could be forgiven, but they also do not seem to have a really deep understanding of the subject. For all but the most general notions and , especially important, for all the configuration , intallation and deployment nuisances you are left on your own. We need a good book covering IN DETAIL pluto and especially Jetspeed 2. Don't waste you money with this mock up of a book, wait for a better title.