This book is part of the Prentice Hall History of Music Series. I have not read every book in the series, but they seem to be similar overall--good but not great.
At first one might think a 300+ page book on Baroque music is sufficient. Palisca begins with the rise of the Baroque ideal, and quickly moves to Italy and the rise of Baroque music there. Other chapters cover various genres and countries, including lute and keyboard music, organ and clavier music in Germany, dramatic music in England, sacred music in France, and J.S. Bach.
Palisca's writing seems good for undergraduate music majors-the reader needs a strong background of musical terms and concepts in order to get the most out of the book, but it is certainly not too dry or cerebral. The musical excerpts in the book are illustrative of Palisca's points, and the bibliographies at the end of each chapter are particularly helpful.
The main problem of this text is its inability to comprehensively address all of the music. While J.S. Bach does receive his own chapter, he only gets twenty pages. Palisca really covers only a couple of concertos in this space, ignoring all of Bach's other works. This happens in a number of places.
What this book had going for it was the fact that there were not any other texts out there which were any better. Professors had to choose between this text and the Bukofzer text from the Norton Series written in 1947 (music scholars have uncovered a great deal of information about Baroque music since the Korean War). I have not read the new Norton book by John Walter Hall, but if it's anything like the others, it will beat Palisca's text with regards to information, scope, and scholarship (though probably not readability).
Professors teaching an undergraduate course may still go with Palisca's book, but they should be prepared to supplant the text with other materials. It may be a good teaser to those with possible interest in Baroque music, and can be used as a reference/springboard to other topics.