content: While I respect the authors as programmers since this book does contain some valuable information, they have no business writing books. This book spends all of its effort discussing how COM works and then how ATL was implemented and provides little insight on how to actually use ATL. After reading this book I was very discouraged from using ATL. Few things are adequately explained. I wonder who the target audience for this book is? It is certainly not ActiveX developers. The second half of the book is superior to the first half. Inside COM, by Rogerson, puts Inside ATL to shame.