* Treats LISP as a language for commercial applications, not a language for academic AI concerns. This could be considered to be a secondary text for the Lisp course that most schools teach . This would appeal to students who sat through a LISP course in college without quite getting it – so a "nostalgia" approach, as in "wow-lisp can be practical…"

* Discusses the Lisp programming model and environment. Contains an introduction to the language and gives a thorough overview of all of Common Lisp’s main features.

* Designed for experienced programmers no matter what languages they may be coming from and written for a modern audience―programmers who are familiar with languages like Java, Python, and Perl.

* Includes several examples of working code that actually does something useful like Web programming and database access.