I wasn't complaining about the last book, I know there is lots of ground work I have to do myself before I'll understand how to animate something. Mike, Chapter 2 sounds like what I meant - a bit more explanation of maya's animation tools that are relevent to games, and the techniques game animators use, before you show us how to use them. Collecting together the tool explanations at the beginning, rather than having to explain each tool as you come up to requiring it in the tutorial, makes more sense to me as it's easier to refer back to.

I think the question is not "is this a maya beginner's book?" but "is this an animator beginner's book?" Do you want a modeller who can use maya to make their models, but who's never animated their models before to be able to follow it?