This book is a primer - it's own title indicates it as such. A primer is what you give to people to get them familiar with something beforehand. SAS is very powerful but it is not intuitive to use - a la Excel. If you haven't used SAS before, reading over this book is a great way to get familiar with it and a nice reference to have for someone new to SAS programming. I learned how to use SAS from this book and the book covering empirical financial research.