The book attempts to address abstract notions of distributed systems and include practical examples, however this book is *not* recommended for the following reasons:
1. Each morsel of information is minimal and without context.
2. Extremely repetitive statements yield no detailed description nor effective examples on any given topic.
3. There are *numerous* contradictory statements.
4. When systems are described within the text, there are only vague notions of the way its components should 'hang together' in a real world application.
5. The text does not stick to the topic at hand.
6. For Java/CORBA at least, no valid IDL information.
Whilst grammatically correct, the authors' use of the English language is a masterpiece in meaningless waffle. Look elsewhere if your degree depends upon it. Unfortunately for me, this was a course recommended book.
I have no alternative titles to recommend; But I suggest you buy _any_ other, it can't be this bad.