Rating: 
Summary: Intelligent and helpful
Review: This book takes you through taking an XML document and creating applications which use XSLT to transform that XML into something useful. The author gets right down to it, no babysitting. This is what a developer needs.Mr. Kay knows what he is talking about and also runs a maillist on the subject. I've read several books on XML technologies and this is by far the most useful. This book plus resources at MSDN should get you up and running.
Rating:
Summary: Just Right
Review: Usually when a book comes out on the heals of a newly accepted standard, it's fully of fluff, and incomplete. Not so with this book. XSLT Programmers Reference is organized well, lots of simple, quick examples, and good overviews. I use this book as a standard text for XSLT classes that I teach. It covers those odd quarky things that you'd miss otherwise. This is a real tool! If you're going to be doing XSLT, you need this book at your side!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Tutorial and Reference publication
Review: As always, another great book from Wrox. If you want to tool-up on this excellent technology, then this book is for you. It has a complete reference of XSLT, including excellent examples of each XSLT element (i.e. sample code, usage scenarios, and cross-references to other helpful topics). I would have liked more information on XSLT Engines, however the one chapter provides enough detail to get started. I suggest using Xalan for your XSLT Engine.
Rating:
Summary: The Definitive XSL Book!
Review: If you are looking for a reference book for XSL, this is it. The information is very, very current. The author is extremely knowledgeable - no wonder, because he wrote his own XSLT processor. Besides covering the XSLT standards, he compares various XSLT processors, which is invaluable. Kudos to WROX for publishing this book.
Rating: 
Summary: The Good, Bad and the Ugly
Review: First the bad news: it is one of hardest books to read and figure out. Lets just say that it is not nicely organized. I realize that this is a reference, but there's no way to find things by example -- say you're looking for how to extract some data using an ancestor axis, then applying some predicate to restrict the set of ancestors you look at and finally to print the number of children of such ancestors -- even though you may realize you've seen an example like this somewhere in the book (this one is concocted) it would take you forever to find it (if you can find it at all ;-( That said, there are so few good, competent books on XSL that this is the best possible one out there so far. So, to that extent, if you're definitely going to have to work with XSL, you perhaps have to live with this book for now.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent excellent excellent
Review: I can't say enough good things about this book. Clear, concise, excellent reference (and, importantly, cross-referenced) for getting the work done. Rather than spend 700 pages describing everything and then have an index, he spends 100 pages on an overview and the other 600+ providing a reference with examples that are easy to follow but cover the features thoroughly. Outstanding work!
Rating:
Summary: Good, But . . .
Review: The problem I have with this book is that, in my opinion, he wastes a lot of space with long explanations that I didn't even read. The first few chapters were full of explanations of nothing. There was no code accompanying the explanations. Personally I want to see code that I can use. XSLT history isn't interesting to me. He also assumes that the reader doesn't have any XML background. So defining DOM, DTD, and the concept of tree data structures were a waste to me. This book should be called Beginning XSLT or something. I just wanted to see some XSL syntax and example implementations. Otherwise it's a pretty good book once he got down to code.
Rating:
Summary: Best book on its subject
Review: I cannot express in words how perfect this book is for xslt. Michael Kay is a genius, and he has put together a complete reference as well as chapters on how to code in xslt. It takes the hassle out of learning the W3C specification. Stop here. Do not buy another book on XSLT. This is the one and the only one you will ever need!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent and thorough
Review: This book gives a very clear and thorough review of the XSLT subset of XSL. I especially like how he compares XSLT to regular programming languages, and the clear, easy to follow examples. A few irritating typographical errors prevent me from giving this book 5 stars. It is well worth the money for anyone who needs to use XSLT.
Rating:
Summary: If you don't look like the guy on the cover, Beware!
Review: The author didn't get to look this way by sitting around on the beach drinking Pina Colada's. This is an excellent book for those who have just learned XML and want to go to the next level. This is a hardcore book for the hardcore web designer. It is not difficult to read or understand, just a lot is explained in its meager 700+ pages. I love the book and can't wait until my next project to implement some of the teachings. This is a great book for those of us who actually stay at home and code on Friday and Saturday nights.
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