This book would be more aptly named "A History of Microsoft Operating Systems: The Basics". As with another reviewer, I had to have this book for a course I took. There is little discussion of universal operating system fundamentals outside of file systems. The vast majority of the book focuses on MS operating systems. They spend more time talking about Windows 3.1 than Mac or UNIX. You want a book to help in troubleshooting or solving problems with operating systems? Unless you're a computer system neophyte this book won't help you. On the other hand, if you know little about operating systems and would like to learn the basics of how they work and the evolution of PC OSs, this would be a useful book.