This book is THE guide to Drupal 7, I have read 3 other books on Drupal 7 and as far as I'm concerned this book includes the same information and often a LOT more, particularly in custom theming from scratch. Before this book came out there was virtually nothing out there on creating and implementing a new region in the .tpl files. This book dedicates a sub-section to the topic in chapter 15 which covers Default Regions, Hidden Regions, Module-Specific Regions, when to use regions vs. hard-coding variables, and then walks you through 2 distinct examples of implementing a new region (p.291-292). The book does a great job of explaining template overrides, theme functions, theme hook suggestions, and the render api's alter hook, showing you the syntax, and then walking you through an exercise. Even for a newbie it does a decent enough job of demonstrating the php code strings so I could copy and paste with some confidence, though I would probably be lost if I had to troubleshoot and I am limited by the applicability of the examples in the book, whatever that may be (I know I have to read a php book if I'm serious about theming in drupal). My only issue with the books theming chapters is that it doesn't have a dedicated section that concludes its fantastic coverage of the individual theming techniques by providing an all-inclusive comparative analysis or custom site build demonstration that reveals the logic of using one theming technique over another in different areas of the site build process. As a newbie, I just quickly became overwhelmed by all my options. It does a great job of explaining the differences in Drupals various strategies for implementing CSS styling and then demonstrating each of them in an all inclusive set of exercises for efficiently managing CSS in Drupal. Of course, I am limiting my discussion to that of theming because thats my main concern at this point, though at the size of a large phone book, I am sure administrators, themers, and developers alike will find their areas of interest covered very thoroughly. I'm only on chapter 17 out of 38 chapters and am already on my way of achieving my lofty goals!