Buy this book if you are an American student of Business Studies, and it is your set textbook. Otherwise, think carefully about what you want.If you want to be able to nod knowingly when a buzzword comes up in conversation, then this book covers lots of them. Unfortunately, you may not learn enough to dare to open your mouth about a topic, but nodding should be safe. The problem is that this book tries to cover the whole of IT, and 600 pages just aren't enough even with the support of a website (now obligatory for IT textbooks).
If you want a jumping-off point to introduce you to the wide world of business use of IT, then you can buy this book and use the website and the links to extra material at the end of each chapter, compensating for the American bias as you go. Please also compensate for the strange bias that relegates computer security to a chapter at the end, squashed in with ethics and the impact of computers on society. Another topic you must tackle on your own is the fields of expertise of IT professionals and why you should rely on them and not on ideas picked up from books called "Introduction to ..." .
If you want to know about a particular aspect of business use of IT, then you will be better off picking a book that covers that smaller area in more depth. If you want to know about the whole of IT, you may well be better off getting a series of such books -- the packing density of facts in this one swamps important principles that other authors may have room to put over more effectively.
If your interest is more IT and less business, then try another book. This book was written by business lecturers, and it shows.
In conclusion, this book was written for a specialist audience of business students who will have to answer a multiple-choice test on each chapter. If this doesn't include you, then you may well prefer to look elsewhere.
