I am a "Classic" Mac OS "Power User." I was accustomed to the power and flexibility of the Classic Mac OS coupled with various third-party utilities & software.
Upon recently acquiring an iMac DV with Tiger installed, I wanted to be able to wield similar power over this new computer, but I saw that in order to do so, I would need to learn Unix, since the various third-party utilities I was using previously would not work on Tiger. So I spent some time reading "man" pages and trying to find internet resources, but all the internet resources assumed a basic knowledge of unix, and reading "man" pages presented me with more information than I could process, as all the unix commands have such a large host of options.
Shortly thereafter, a friend got me this book. Unlike other materials I had seen, this book did not get bogged down in complex details. Instead, it "walks" the user through the totally novel (to mac users) environment of Terminal, explaining the terse grammar of UNIX, touching on the most useful options.
Some cool things I learned from this book include:
How to use the terminal to ftp to a site (you don't need fetch!)
How to use regular expressions and wildcards to quickly sort through scads of data
How to "pipeline" commands to automate in a way that would be much more difficult using applescript.
How to change the terminal prompt.
Perhaps after the next book, I'll feel confident enough to set up the SSH server.
When I emailed Mr. Taylor with a question, I was amazed when he actually responded. He seems like a really cool guy, and I think I'll get his next book, the one on shell scripting.