Though it was already pointed by previous reviewers, this book's main selling point is the amount of knowledge accessible for someone previously not working wit A.I. The information gathered is approaching overly simplified yet really just well laid-out. If you're into the topic and only starting to work with it, it's a great to begin and gather basics plus extended info help-book. It's a jumpstart to the extensive research topics and ideas, yet one must comprehend that time does not simply go by, it flies, and since the book was completed ideas have moved, switched and tested areas previously not considered. If you want to get the grasp of the ideas, sure - it's a good read, if you, however, prefer latest research on the plate i'd rather point you to several conference proceedings instead. And if you rather opt for implementations given on a silver plate, there are books focused on several platforms and programming languages and with A.I. methods given.
This book was the reason I've chosen Neural Networks as my diploma topic before AI was cool. I read this book long time ago but I remember that it contains full and deep overview of history and application of AI in different areas, also, it goes through all classic AI building and training algorithms.
About halfway through I found myself wishing I had chosen to read Russell and Norvig instead, although that's most likely just a case of that thing where you are never satisfied with what you have and always thinking you should have chosen the other thing, and that everything in your life would just be so much better if only you had said or done this one thing differently, as if some external thing could really ever make you happy or satisfy you, when really the problem is entirely internal, and maybe you actually have an inkling that that is the case, but you can't bear to admit it to yourself because that would make everything even more hopeless because external things are relatively easy to change but internal things are all but impossible, so you just continue to act as though you would have understood and enjoyed the other well-known AI textbook much better because the problem was in the choice of textbook, not in your own brain.