Rating: 
Summary: Excellent, concise and useful
Review: The Almanac is an indispensable tool for the pattern professional. I use it daily in my capacity as a consultant. It's great when I can remember the existence of a pattern, but not quite the name. The Almanac has just enough information for me to recall the essence of the patterns. It's well organized and concise. The only place I can find "all the patterns" in one place.
Rating: 
Summary: Absolutely useless
Review: This is just an index of patterns with references. To be of any use, it should be a computer program/database instead of a book. It is like using a printed table instead of a calculator to solve the formula. I cannot think of a target reader population for this book. I guess it is for people that know every pattern already, but they've forgotten where have they read about them, so this serves as an idex. A waste of money.
Rating:
Summary: WARNING - This is just a list of patterns
Review: This is nothing more than a shopping list of patterns. No real content, nothing to learn, just a catalog of patterns. The patterns are not even explained to any degree. Many other good pattern books. Click Search...
Rating:
Summary: What we've been waiting for!
Review: This is the book that the pattern community has been waiting for! The one source of pointers and intents for all the patterns that have been published about software and selected other topics. In order to locate a pattern, or even know it existed before this book you would have had to have studied all the various pattern books and websites, ranging from the Gang of Four (Gamma, Helm, Johnson & Vlissides) to the latest PLoP proceedings. This book makes it possible to identify a problem that you have (such as dealing with queues), turn to the index to look up that topic (12 different patterns related to queues are indexed, as well as citations of several collections of patterns), and then turn to the cited pages to determine if the patterns might be useful to you in solving your current problem. The value of this book is not that it restates all the patterns, it is in its ability to index the patterns so that they can be found. I think it does an admirable job of this. To achieve this Linda Rising has tackled the monumental job of documenting the intents of all these patterns. For those patterns that I'm familiar with she's done a great job capturing the intent. This book won't make the reader an expert on the use of any pattern, but will contribute to their ability to create better software.
Rating:
Summary: What we've been waiting for!
Review: This is the book that the pattern community has been waiting for! The one source of pointers and intents for all the patterns that have been published about software and selected other topics. In order to locate a pattern, or even know it existed before this book you would have had to have studied all the various pattern books and websites, ranging from the Gang of Four (Gamma, Helm, Johnson & Vlissides) to the latest PLoP proceedings. This book makes it possible to identify a problem that you have (such as dealing with queues), turn to the index to look up that topic (12 different patterns related to queues are indexed, as well as citations of several collections of patterns), and then turn to the cited pages to determine if the patterns might be useful to you in solving your current problem. The value of this book is not that it restates all the patterns, it is in its ability to index the patterns so that they can be found. I think it does an admirable job of this. To achieve this Linda Rising has tackled the monumental job of documenting the intents of all these patterns. For those patterns that I'm familiar with she's done a great job capturing the intent. This book won't make the reader an expert on the use of any pattern, but will contribute to their ability to create better software.
Rating: 
Summary: Be forewarned
Review: When this book is described as a listing of 700+ patterns, think literally. No UML, no suggested implementation, no rationale, no CRC - just a brief description of the pattern. And I do mean brief; the GoF's Mediator is reduced to six or seven lines. If you're looking for a good book on patterns, go elsewhere. If you're looking for a good index to pattern material you may already have (JOOP, GoF, Smalltalk Patterns, PLoP books, PLoP conferences, and others) this may be a worthwhile investment as the book includes excellent citation sections.
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