Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant!
Review: This is an unbelievable book in terms of material and presentation. The clarity and focus is admirable. It is comprehensive, adequately pedantic and very well written with very little 'waffle'. An ideal text for all levels of musicians. The section on percussion and woodwind are especially noteworthy. This book is better than that of the same title by Forsyth, by a long shot. I thoroughly enjoyed it!
Rating:
Summary: The Bible of orchestration basics
Review: This is it, the reference work you should have bought back in college when you first studied orchestration. It's comprehensive and comprehensible, thoroughly elaborating on the strengths and weaknesses (in all registers) of the standard orchestral palette. A bit lacking in imagination and inventiveness -- but, hey, it's a reference work...
Rating: 
Summary: These Pistons are burned out
Review: Walter Piston taught at Harvard. I am a former Harvard music major. I find all of his books to be excessively pendantic to the point where they are boring. There is no joy in his writing. He approaches his subject like the author of a high school alegra text. He wrote for money and his books were published because he had impressive academic credentials, and for no other reason.The true test is to do some brief comparative reading with texts by other authors. Who inspires? Who bores? Judge for yourself.
Rating:
Summary: This is the one (but also buy the Forsyth)
Review: Wow! A reviewer below really hit the nail on the head. All I can do besides expressing my appreciation (thank you!) is to concur and amplify. I have on my shelf orchestration books by Kent Kennan, Cecil Forsyth, Rimsky-Korsakov, Hector Berlioz (revised by Richard Strauss), and Walter Piston. I have read Rene Leibowitz's and also read or skimmed through various others. The Walter Piston text is the last I acquired, and I really wish I'd bought it long ago. It makes clear what the others do not, what I had to learn by trial and error. It's writing is more plodding than Piston's "Counterpoint" and his "Harmony" (I mean Piston's "Harmony", not Mark Devoto's "Harmony"), but no more plodding than any other orchestration text except Cecil Forsyth's. The solution is to buy both the Piston and the Forsyth.
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