I bought this book recently to enhance my knowledge of parallel I/O to improve a climate model built on MPI technology. To my disappointment, the author spent less than 1/10th of the book to actual parallel I/O programming. And the mere effort is a list of a few MPI subroutines. The rest of the book tries to cover everything about high performance I/O but does not convey anything USEFUL. I feel the price is way too high for such a mediocre book that talks about too broad a topic and fail to focus on anything specific. I glanced through the book and read the chaptors that talked a little bit about MPI and scientific data management. And now the book is gathering dust on my shelf.