comprehensive book on concrete - just what I was looking for before building my own house.

Minimal coverage of additives, finishing, and concrete mix variations. Good coverage
of form building and setting. Not as complete as the title implies; really another formwork book.

Covered many areas and ideas that were new to me (like rebar chairs and footing brackets), but I wish more coverage had been shown on dealing with hydronic tubing in slabs. Even the hydronic books lack specificity on how to maintain tubing at uniform location in slab so as not to be too deep, yet not so close to surface to prevent damage by saw-cut control joints. Would have also like to have seen more discussion on powered trowels for flatwork, and finishing stairs so as not to see formwork impressions on riser (says to leave formwork on for several days, but that means no texturing options for the risers.)

It gave a lot of great information for bigger jobs with concrete. We were initially looking for something on a much smaller scale, but we are going to be doing our driveway soon, and this book had much needed information on how to do it yourself.

Note that I am reading this book as a homeowner and "Saturday Mason" in that I am looking for tips and tricks for masonry and concrete work and perhaps some how-to. This book is a bit different than many of the other concrete and masonry books available. This book is composed of articles from Fine Homebuilding, mostly written by different authors and the one big weakness of this approach is that there is a lack of consistancy. For ex. one article indicates that you should always place the anchors in their locations before the pour and only insert after the pour if it is not possible while another article does not give advice but says that they typically only place the anchors prior to the pour when required by code. If you can get past that, however, there are some excellent things that the homeowner level books (i.e. the how-to's) do not go into, like drainage and problems with water leaking in a basement. Overall, this book is a supplement to, but not a substitute for the other homeowner level books out there. However, I am not sure that it's target audience is the homeowner and not someone in the trade because it does touch on things that are a little more advanced than the homeowner books. I was hoping for more information on foundation design than what I have been able to find from other books, and this book disappoints in that regard. I don't regret buying the book for the excellent section on drainage problems alone, but am still looking for a book that deals with foundation designs for simple stuff like sheds and larger outbuildings.