It's a shame that this book carries the name "visual quickstart guide", because other than the fact that it's in no way a quickstart guide, it's a decent book.
We're using this book in an introductory Flash CS4 class that I'm taking, and in that capacity, I think this book fails miserably. The book is really a reference, not a learning tool. It doesn't take you through any projects, or demonstrations, or show you techniques on how different tools within Flash are used to create things. And it really doesn't hold your hand from the beginning and get you to the point where you feel comfortable using the tool. Instead it just exhaustively walks through tool by tool, showing you how to use that tool, then moving onto the next.
So if you want to know how to create a mask in Flash, you can turn right to the section on how to do that, and learn that quickly. But if you've never used Flash, and your goal is to create some graphics for your website, this book is nearly useless.
The book is pretty much split into four parts. The first part details all the drawing tools. The second part talks about the animation tools, the third part talks about "interactivity" (i.e., actionscript) and the final part talks about video and sound.
I'm glad I have the book, I'll keep it as a reference, but teachers, please don't make the mistake in thinking this is a "sit down and read how to use Flash" type of book, because it certainly is not.