In my experience, the purpose of this book is extremely unusual in programming books. Most of them are either an introduction to the topic, or a reference book like a 'cookbook' or what basically amounts to a printed version of the online documentation. Those books get the job done for people with a project (or an employment position) in mind. They learn what they need to do to use the technology, then they get to work. We should all know by now that reading a book doesn't actually teach you anything -- you have to go out and actually apply that knowledge to really "know" the technology.

But what if you want to learn to use Django, but don't have a project in mind? How cool would it be if one of the core Django developers created a couple of fully-functional applications, step-by-step, and let you follow along? That's exactly what James Bennett has done here. You can literally be brand-new to Django and finish this book having written multiple Django applications, learning all the major functionality of Django along the way, and even implementing best-practices for creating reusable applications.

If you've been working with Django for any length of time, a lot of this book will feel like review, because it does explain templates, views, URLs, models, and the MTV concept. However, there's a lot in here for you as well.

Here are some of the cool things in this book that you don't find in any of the standard documentation sources:

* How to (easily) integrate a rich-text editor into the Django admin interface
* Use third-party modules such as pygment, the Delicious API, and Akismet spam-blocking
* In-depth examples of creating custom template tags
* Complete examples of integrating django.contrib applications (such as comments and feeds)
* Notes on version control, distributing apps, building and deploying apps

All that and more, plus this is probably the definitive guide to writing your Django applications to be reusable.

In conclusion, if you're brand-new to Django and want a yellow-brick road to walk down, here it is. If you're an experienced Django programmer, you don't need this book, but I practically guarantee you'd learn a couple of things you didn't know. If you are new to Django, however, I highly recommend that once you finish this book you read The Definitive Guide to Django: Web Development Done Right, Second Edition cover-to-cover once you finish this book. It will fill in all the gaps and you'll really be able to do pretty much anything in Django.