OK, I admit that I was excited when I ordered this book. When I got it, I was a bit surprised to find it very thin. Reading the ToC made it seem like a good buy, but when checking the contents I was let down. It contains loads of uncommented Python-code and some small nuggets of editorial narrative in between the code. It utterly fails to convey any meaning or reasoning why I should contemplate using Tornado. But it seems to believe that I should understand all equivalent stuff from other frameworks (like routes etc.), so it doesn't really explain anything.

To say I was disappointing, is the least that can be said! This is the reason why O'Reilly has gone from a respected publisher to one of the pack: idiotic books published because they have novelty value, without any quality assurance! Add to that the fact that they don't even have an index in the book, you start to question their editors as well…

When you start to check the authors, you begin to understand that they ain't maybe the best and the brightest bunch, but just opportunists. Avoid, this book, as it only makes someone else richer and doesn't give you anything useful in return.