On the whole, Guy Steele's book about relocating to Seattle is a very well organized and written book. It's just that it has a few problems.
There's a point of view problem with the book, partly because of the fact that he's a former Los Angelino land developer turned writer. He has lots of nice things to say about high-road developed areas, such as Medina and Mercer Island, but he has very little to say about low-road areas where things grew as they needed to grow. He has lots of nice ways to make sprawl sound good (his description of Issaquah is a good example), but he doesn't have much to say about where it hasn't been able to take root (or where infilling will come later and at a substantial cost, such as in the International District).
His take on West Seattle was, as a result, fairly predictable (he hates it, almost going to the extent of ignoring it) but he nails down the core issues fairly well (it's isolated from the rest of Seattle and its crime is up). From my perspective, it compares favorably with similar areas in Atlanta, such as the Morningside/Virginia-Highland area near Emory, despite the problem with its location. It doesn't appear to suffer from too much attention from land developers and perhaps because of its relative isolation, it is a fairly comfortable and affordable area, which may appeal to some people moving to Seattle. It was apparent that because of his point of view, he spent less time researching this one area than he should have.
What's more disturbing than the problems with point of view are the problems with omissions and errors. The map insets often don't match the enlarged areas and there are some notable areas of Seattle, such as Ballard, which have been left out entirely. Maybe it's because it's easy for him to ignore Ballard, but I find this and other similar omissions annoying. Sure, maybe you don't want to live in the sound footprint of Sea-Tac and for that reason alone, you too would ignore Rainier Beach and Skyway, but it would have been nice to have known they existed as well.
As a result of these problems, this is an incomplete book. It's worth the money, but I really hope these problems are fixed in the next edition.
