Chapter 6, "Data," gets into the basics of data sources, data binding, resources, and data transfer operations. Because WPF's data binding system is deeply integrated in the platform, with the proper model you can create applications with a completely data driven approach.

Chapter 7, "Actions," describes how events, commands and triggers work to make things happen in your applications. Up till now your topics have focused on the application presenting information to the user, but many times you need an application to respond to input from the system or the user. This chapter will show you how.

Chapter 8, "Styles," will show you the styling system in WPF. Styling enables the clean separation of the designer and developer by allowing the loose coupling between the visual appearance of a UI and the programmable structure. You will also see how styles can be packaged in to themes which provide consistency across applications.

The Appendix, "Base Services," drills down into some of the low level services in WPF. The topics covered include threading, property and event system, input, composition, and printing system.

Essential Windows Presentation Foundation provides a very good primer on WPF. It is remarkably focused and to the point. It provides a concise overview that will point you down the right path and does, as the author suggests, constitute a good reference book.

The only thing I wish this book had going for it was more insight into how WPF evolved, especially coming from one of the architects of WPF. With something as complex as the changes that created WPF, it would have been nice to have more in-depth discussion on why some of the decisions were made.

That said, Essential Windows Presentation Foundation does provide the key principles on using and creating WPF applications in a relatively short period of time. It is aimed at the developer, so this is not the place for a pure beginner to start, but if you are a developer, and want to get up to speed quickly then Essential Windows Presentation Foundation will give you a solid foundation. I recommend this book.