Walter Tracy was successor to Stanley Morison, at least in advising the London Times and in opinionated personality. In this volume, he bridges much of the gap from Morison's writings on typography up to today's practice.
There's a lot of good technical content here, almost all of it regarding nuances of letterforms and design of type faces. He offers some interesting history, as well, from the turn of the century up to about the 1950s.
Among other type designers, he describes Rudolf Koch, best known for Kabel. As presented here, Koch was the first type designer to bridge the gap between the blackletter German alphabets and the Latin letters used elsewhere in Europe, to the advantage of both traditions. Tracy also spends a fair bit of time on Frederick Goudy. Goudy is certainly worth study, for both his succcesses and his less graceful work. Tracy seems to focus on the latter - his description of Goudy reads like a left-handed compliment in essay form.
Tracy was active from the hot-lead days, through photo typesetting, and into the early electronic era. He notes the advantages and weaknesses in each technology, as of when the book was written. Digital technology has progressed since then. Scanning has almost granted his wish that ".. vectorising is an automatic process ... [so] designers' work can be reproduced directly and with complete fidelity." Electronic design has also somewhat invalidated his claim that "the method of manufacture has [little] influence on the design of type." Frere-Jones' Reactor font is one among those that could never have appeared in metal. Also, the punchcutter's craft acted as an engraved metal barrier to entry into type design. With that barrier gone, amateur type design has come into its own (for better or worse).
The personality, the history, and the commentary on type design all make this a worthwhile book. It won't help the beginner much, and deals only with typographic issues at the level of letterforms and letter spacing. Still, it's a view worth seeing.