This is a good book for someone who has no OO knowledge/experience wanting to learn Smalltalk for several reasons: 1) it avoids overloading the student with too much theory. It is particularly good at side-stepping a high-level description of objects in chapter one followed by designing objects with classes as an exercise in chapter two. In fact, it takes the opposite approach of those Fasttrack books; the first five chapters gently introduce the student to the Smalltalk environment and to object interactions. 2) It sticks to the task at hand: teaching Smalltalk to the neophyte. It does this by avoiding the Language Comparison Holy War and the My Style Is Better Than Yours Holy War. 3) It takes its time with each topic, reinforcing each point with words, exercises and homeworks.
There are two points weighing against this book as it stands: 1) it's dated; it's based on an older version of Smalltalk/V and uses constructs avoided now (such as the message "become" to change a variable's state). 2) For the person on the fast-track, it's slow. It spends a whole chapter on numbers, and waits three more before discussing classes.
In summary, this is a good book from which to learn Smalltalk and objects. I recommend using Smalltalk Express, a descendant of Smalltalk/V freely available from ObjectShare, along with the book.
