Rating: 
Summary: Very good book for all level users!
Review: As a person fairly new to TeX, I found this book most helpful. I made a surprising discovery this summer while working with professional scientists who write almost everything in LaTex: many of them used this book, too! It, along with it's companions, are THE reference for many of these scientists. The one shortcoming of this, as well as every LaTeX guide I have seen, is that it doesn't explain how to include external postscript graphics at all, something we all need to do, it seems.
Rating: 
Summary: A useful help
Review: Fantastic. Enlightning and absolutely clear. It gave me all the information I wasn't able to find in other books. A "must" for LaTeX composers.
Rating: 
Summary: A reference by default
Review: For a book about typesetting, it is really ugly, as most of the books that have been designed with LaTeX I guess. It is sad that nowadays peoples feel compelled and that editors allow them to design most of their books with such a LaTeX stuff. At its worst, I found one day in Laurent Schwartz's "ThÈorie des ensembles et Topologie" a LaTeX command inserted in the text, along with continuous functions and compact sets...Lamport is not responsible for this actually, and we should thank him for LaTeX the code still useful for reports, but LaTeX the book is another matter, and it's rubbish not just with typography. Jokes are often dull and examples really silly (y > z if x^2 real, lim_n x = 0 or "ceci n'est pas une pipe noire"), and I feel like as a technical book it still could be better organized and explained. For instance, what is a fragile command and how and why you need to protect them, that is really confusing when Lamport decides to explain this in the middle of a paragraph devoted to sectioning. And it's worst when you need later to know what a fragile command is, and that you fall down in this mess. This remains the reference however, the one I use any time I need recalling what the hell LaTeX is doing See the LaTeX manual or LaTeX Companion for explanation.
Rating: 
Summary: Like the content, hate the binding.
Review: I am a recent immigrant to the world of LaTeX, and find this book a very adequate guide. My needs are modest, and this book is well enough organized to meet those needs without fuss. Four stars for content. The cover (paperback) fell off the signatures within the first month, though - the glue failed completely. One star for shoddiness, only because the scale goes no lower. Three stars averages the two ratings, rounded up.
Rating: 
Summary: a quick hack of the first edition, this book doesn't cut it!
Review: I never thought Lamport's first edition was any good. This edition for latex2e is worse. Many of latex2e's additions are treated poorly (e.g. the new font mechanism). Lamport wrote the first book on latex, and even though it wasn't a great book, it had the advantage of being both the first and the authoritative guide. As far as latex2e is concerned, Lamport ignores so many new developments, so many new issues that this book seems like a quick hack of the first edition. No serious treatment of the new font mechanism, no mention of some of the important packages that now exist for latex, no treatment of foreign languages, superficial treatment of graphics, and no discussion of advanced math formatting issues. The book probably deserves two stars but gets only one because of the gall of re-packaging and selling something that's so very close to the first edition. Don't waste your money on it (I got my copy as a gift, and will gladly pass it on to the first person that sends me a self-addressed, stamped envelope). If you need a good book on latex2e, consider the Latex Companion.
Rating:
Summary: a quick hack of the first edition, this book doesn't cut it!
Review: I never thought Lamport's first edition was any good. This edition for latex2e is worse. Many of latex2e's additions are treated poorly (e.g. the new font mechanism). Lamport wrote the first book on latex, and even though it wasn't a great book, it had the advantage of being both the first and the authoritative guide. As far as latex2e is concerned, Lamport ignores so many new developments, so many new issues that this book seems like a quick hack of the first edition. No serious treatment of the new font mechanism, no mention of some of the important packages that now exist for latex, no treatment of foreign languages, superficial treatment of graphics, and no discussion of advanced math formatting issues. The book probably deserves two stars but gets only one because of the gall of re-packaging and selling something that's so very close to the first edition. Don't waste your money on it (I got my copy as a gift, and will gladly pass it on to the first person that sends me a self-addressed, stamped envelope). If you need a good book on latex2e, consider the Latex Companion.
Rating:
Summary: Don't get this - Get Kopka & Daly's "A Guide to LaTeX"
Review: I thought I hated LaTeX - in truth, I hated this book. This book gets you started and then frustrates you. I believe the author tried to be concise and cut too much. After struggling with this book for way too long, I bought Kopka and Daly's "A Guide to LaTeX", which a great book; it has a good introduction for beginners and serves as a great reference for experts. Skip the pain I went through and just get Kopka and Daly.
Rating:
Summary: Don't get this - Get Kopka & Daly's "A Guide to LaTeX"
Review: I thought I hated LaTeX - in truth, I hated this book. This book gets you started and then frustrates you. I believe the author tried to be concise and cut too much. After struggling with this book for way too long, I bought Kopka and Daly's "A Guide to LaTeX", which a great book; it has a good introduction for beginners and serves as a great reference for experts. Skip the pain I went through and just get Kopka and Daly.
Rating:
Summary: Good book to have beside your LaTeX
Review: If you are beginner (like me) in LaTeX, this book is good source of information. However, bear in mind that it is cross-linked a lot, so some reading before getting your teeth in LaTeX is in place. For more advanced problems, you will, however, need at least one more book (The Latex Companion comes to mind and is often mentioned).
Rating:
Summary: Useful, but not enough
Review: LaTeX is a powerful typesetting program, and you need a book to use it (unlike Word). Lamport's book is not a bad choice, but it's not great either. It's well written and has a very good index, but it deals only with the 'defaults', that is, documents written in English following certain (sometimes stupid) formatting conventions. For instance, if you want to write in, say, Spanish or French, Lamport tells you to type \'{e} to get an accented 'e'. I later discovered through a friend that by adding \usepackage[latin1]{inputenc} in the preamble, you can type accented letters normally. This is only one example. There are many useful things not covered in the book, and I find this annoying. It seems one book is not enough for LaTeX. Eventually, you'll want to modify some of the formatting conventions in LaTeX, and for that you'll have to 'hack' TeX macros or write them from scratch. Lamport contains only scant advice on this. I was annoyed to find that you can't imitate the book's style (e.g. horizontal rules in the headers) using the commands described in the book. Even LaTeX 'packages' (extensions such as the 'amsmath' style file) are of limited use. However, I must say that none of the other LaTeX books I've seen is very good. My advice is this: buy Lamport as a tutorial and reference on 'standard' LaTeX, and look for 'extra' information in the net or on your own LaTeX distribution. Even better is to ask an experienced user. As your experience grows, you'll be able to modify the TeX macros in LaTeX's source code to suit your needs.
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